Mehroz Ahmed

Graduate Student

University of Texas, Austin

 
Mehroz received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Hunter College at the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2018. During which he studied optoelectronic materials for organic photovoltaic applications in the lab of Professor Adam Braunschweig at the CUNY Advanced Sciences Research Center. He then began his Ph.D. studies at The University of Texas at Austin under the aegis of Professor Jonathan L. Sessler. He is currently working on developing responsive hydrogel materials towards the sensing and extraction applications of metal ion targets including lithium.

Vishikh Athavale

Graduate Student

University of Pennsylvania

 
Vishikh received his B.Sc. degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, majoring in Chemistry. He is currently a graduate student in the Subotnik Group, where his research focuses on electronic structure methods.

Ranadeb Ball

Graduate Student

University of Pennsylvania

Ranadeb completed his bachelor (B.Sc.) and Masters (M.Sc.) degree in science from Presidency University, Kolkata and IIT Bombay, respectively. During these years, he has learned and worked in the field of electrochemical catalysis and energy storage devices. Working in the Anna group, he is studying the vibrational dynamics of lanthanide binding ligand systems in aqueous phase to understand the trend of binding strength and complexation stability of the ligand across the lanthanide series.

Subhajyoti Chaudhuri

Postdoctoral Fellow

Northwestern University

 

Subha received his PhD from Yale University in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Victor Batista, and joined the group of Prof. George Schatz at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral fellow. His research involves using a combination of theoretical & computational methods to study physical/ chemical processes that involve electron transfer for theory-guided design of materials with interesting electronic properties.

Maxwell Furigay

Graduate Student

University of Pennsylvania

 
Max received his B.S. degree from Trinity College in Hartford, CT, majoring in Chemistry, Environmental Science, and Public Policy. There, he worked in the lab of Dr. Cheyenne Brindle, studying carbonyl compound separations techniques. He is currently a graduate student in the Schelter Group, where his research focuses on tantalum/niobium coordination and separations chemistry.

Leighton Jones
Postdoctoral Fellow
Northwestern University

Leighton received his BSc and MChem degrees in chemistry from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, with a 1st Class distinction and Honors in 2013. Projects were largely experimental and along the lines of synthetic organic chemistry. He pursued a PhD with the Gunnell and Matthews Scholarship, also at Leeds, that contained elements of both computational and synthetic chemistry and was defended in 2017. The thesis covered several areas but the main theme was the computational design and synthesis of conjugated organic materials for semiconductor applications, which won the School’s J B Cohen Prize the following year, in 2018. In 2017, Leighton became a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC) in the UK.

Leighton undertook a year in industry as part of his first degree and then work in Japan for a couple of months during his PhD, all of which proved invaluable experience. He then moved to Evanston in the US and started work as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern in the Ratner group from February 2018, and now currently in the Schatz group from 2019 to present. His broad interests include single molecules, 2D and bulk materials chemistry, with the focus being electronic structure, properties and reactivity across both organic and inorganic materials.

Picture of Jerod

Jerod  Kieser
Postdoctoral Fellow
Purdue University

Dr. Jerod Kieser completed his doctoral research under Prof. John Protasiewicz at Case Western Reserve University focusing on the synthesis of main group molecules exhibiting unique reactivity and optoelectronic properties. As a member of Prof. Bart’s team within CSSM, he is currently investigating the fundamental coordination chemistry of tellurium, concentrating on employing redox active ligands which can access the wide range of oxidation states available for this element. This knowledge will then be applied towards the recovery of tellurium from end-of-life cadmium telluride solar cells.

Chenshuai Li
Graduate Student
University of Pennsylvania

Chenshuai received his B.S. from Peking University in 2018 under the guidance of Professor Xuefeng Fu before going on to become a research assistant at Fudan University for Professor Huayi Fang from 2018-2019.  He is currently interested in understanding ultrafast photoinduced processes and vibronic signatures using pump-probe spectroscopy, two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES), and two-dimensional 2D electronic-vibrational spectroscopy (2DEV).

Wenqi (Vince) Liu

Postdoctoral Fellow

Northwestern University

 
Wenqi (Vince) Liu was born and grew up in Shandong Province, China. He received his BS in Chemistry from Shandong University in 2013. As an undergraduate student, he spent three years working with Prof. Aiyou Hao on supramolecular gels based on cyclodextrin self-assembly. In 2018, he obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry with Prof. Bradley D. Smith from University of Notre Dame, USA and received the “Dow Chemical Company Outstanding Graduate Student Award”. His graduate research focused on molecular recognition using a tetralactam macrocycle in water and development of preassembly and in situ capture technology. In August 2018, Wenqi joined the Stoddart group at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral fellow. His ongoing research focuses on developing cyclophanes with emergent properties in area of molecular recognition, photophysics, high energy material and porous materials.

Jiawei Lu
Graduate Student
University of Pennsylvania

Jiawei received his bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University in 2016. He joined Dr. Anna’s group at University of Pennsylvania in 2017 and is now a fourth year Ph.D. student. As a member of an ultrafast spectroscopy lab, he is currently working on the investigation on the dynamics of the photophysical and photochemical processes in the condensed phase using two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES).

Allison Peroutka
Graduate Student
Colorado School of Mines

Allison received her BSE in Chemical Engineering from the University of Iowa in 2020. During her undergraduate she spent two years working with Dr. Tori Forbes in uranium solid-state chemistry. She is currently a graduate student in the Shafer Group, where her focus is on supramolecular assemblies of lanthanide cyclodextrin complexes. 

Daliao Tao

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Texas, Austin

 
Daliao Tao was born in Zhejiang province, China, in 1991. He
received his B.S. degree from Zhejiang University of Technology
in 2013. He subsequently joined Prof. Xiaoyu Huang’s laboratory
at Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), Chinese
Academy of Sciences to pursue his Ph.D. degree and graduated in
June 2018. His research in SIOC focused on "living"
crystallization-driven self-assembly of oligo(p-phenylenevinylene)-
containing BCPs. Daliao moved to University of Texas at Austin in May
2019，under the supervision of Professor Jonathan L. Sessler as a postdoctoral
fellow. Now Daliao focuses on the creation of polymeric network for the
recognition and extraction of lithium.

Poki Tse
Graduate Student
Colorado School of Mines

Poki Tse received her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Washington in 2017 and she completed her undergraduate thesis regarding spectroscopic analysis of carbonyl modes in deuterated electrolytes for energy storage application in Dr. Cody Schlenker’s lab.  She then began pursuing her PhD degree in Dr. Jenifer Shafer’s group in Colorado School of Mines. She is currently working on understanding lanthanide electrochemistry to advance intragroup separations.

Madeleine Uible

Graduate Student

Purdue University

Madeleine Uible obtained her B.S. in chemistry from Florida State University in 2020. She completed her undergraduate thesis under the guidance of Dr. Michael Shatruk on the magnetic properties and structural phase transitions in the manganese selenide-manganese telluride system. She is currently a graduate student in Dr. Suzanne Bart’s lab, where she is investigating tellurium reduction and recovery to be applied towards cadmium telluride solar cells.

Hu Wang

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Texas, Austin

 

Hu received his B. S. in applied chemistry from Xidian University. In 2014, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Feihe Huang at Zhejiang University to pursue his Ph. D. in chemistry. He received his doctoral degree from Zhejiang University on June 30, 2019. His doctoral studies focused on constructing functional materials based on supramolecular interactions. He then moved to The University of Texas at Austin to work as a postdoctoral fellow, jointly advised by Prof. Jonathan L. Sessler and Prof. Zak Page.

Wei Weng
Graduate Student
University of Pennsylvania

Wei Weng obtained her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China in 2016. She completed her undergraduate thesis under the guidance of Dr. Junfa Zhu on studying the interfacial properties of perovskite solar cells using synchrotron radiation photoelectron spectroscopy. After that she joined Dr. Jessica Anna’s lab at University of Pennsylvania for PhD study. Currently she is working on investigating the influence of ligand structural variation on the properties and dynamics of copper complexes using ultrafast multidimensional infrared spectroscopy.

Huang Wu
Postdoctoral Fellow
Northwestern University

Huang received his B.S. degree in applied chemistry from Tianjin University in 2014. He completed his PhD at Nankai University under the guidance of Professor Yu Liu. During his graduate studies, he also joined Professor Stoddart’s group at Northwestern University as a joint-training PhD for one year. His doctoral research was focused on the development of photo-responsive supramolecular materials and their applications. In August 2019, Huang joined Professor Stoddart’s group as a postdoctoral fellow. His ongoing research involves the design and synthesis of photo- and redox-responsive molecular machines and functional macrocycles.

Yanze Wu
Graduate Student
University of Pennsylvania

Yanze obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2018. Currently, he is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, working with Dr. Subotnik on chemical dynamics.

Jiawang Zhou

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Pennsylvania

 
Jiawang obtained his B.S. in Chemical Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2010. He then worked with Professor Art Bragg at Johns Hopkins University as a Ph.D. student where his research focused on interrogation of photoresponsive materials, (e.g., π and hybrid σ–π conjugated oligomers, polymers, and photoswitches) by means of femtosecond stimulated Raman and transient absorption spectroscopies. After that he joined Wasielewski group at Northwestern University as a postdoc and studied photoinduced electron and energy transfer processes with various time-resolved spectroscopies. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Anna Group and working with multidimensional spectroscopies.