Alison Bain

My research aims to understand the physical properties of aerosol using a combination of single particle and macroscopic techniques. Current areas of interest include developing techniques to measure the surface tension of sub picoliter volume droplets and to determine the impact of solid inclusions, including microplastics, on aerosol properties such as surface tension and water transport.

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Chong Fang

Ultrafast spectroscopy on novel materials and functional biomolecules. "The interplay between chemistry, physics, and biology greatly facilitates the ultrafast spectroscopic advances in the molecular vibration domain, which include the newly developed FSRS (femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy) and 2D IR (two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy). In our lab, the real-time structural snapshots of functional biomolecules 'in action' offer unprecedented mechanistic insights on the intrinsic timescale (10 fs-1 ps) critical for their specific functions."

[email protected]
(541) 737-6704

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Wei Kong

Spectroscopic methods for studies of chemical reaction mechanisms. “We are interested in using electronic spectroscopy to investigate photochemical and photophysical properties of two types of materials: biologically related species such as nucleic acid bases, amino acids, their oligomers, and their polymers, and nanomaterials such as quantum dots.”

[email protected]
(541) 737-6714

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Thomas Osborn Popp

The Osborn Popp Lab works at the interface of physical chemistry, materials science, and chemical biology to quantify and control the spatial arrangement of molecules within complex systems. We develop cutting-edge NMR methods and technology to study systems with elements of both structural order and compositional heterogeneity. We make use of tools uncommonly utilized in traditional chemistry labs such as computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D printing to develop new approaches to scientific questions that are otherwise challenging to answer by currently available techniques. Research in our lab is highly interdisciplinary, blending biological and inorganic synthetic laboratory techniques with a hands-on approach to custom-built synthetic and spectroscopic instrumentation.

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Tim Zuehlsdorff

My main research interest lies in developing computational techniques capable of predicting the optical properties of large systems, ranging from solvated dyes to semiconductor nanoparticles and pigment-protein complexes. The approaches I use are based on time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT). I have developed a computational approach to linear-response TDDFT that scales linearly with the number of electrons, allowing the study of system sizes far beyond the reach of conventional cubic scaling approaches. I am also a developer of the ONETEP linear-scaling density-functional theory (DFT) package.

A further interest of mine is to study how polarization effects, as well as the coupling of the electronic excitations to nuclear vibrations, influences the absorption and fluorescence line shapes of chromophores embedded in complex environments, such as solvents and photoactive proteins. I am also modeling the influences of the complex environment on non-linear spectroscopy such as 2D electronic spectroscopy (2DES), with a specific focus of how the quantum treatment of complex protein environments alters signatures of vibronic coherences in photoactive proteins.

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