Raffaella Buonsanti obtained her PhD in Nanochemistry in 2010 at the National Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Salento. Then, she moved to the US where she spent over five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, first as a postdoc and project scientist at the Molecular Foundry and after as a tenure-track staff scientist in the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis. In October 2015 she started as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at EPFL. She is passionate about materials chemistry, nanocrystals, understanding nucleation and growth mechanisms, energy, chemical transformations.

Jennifer A. Hollingsworth is a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Fellow and Fellow of the American Physical Society, Division of Materials Physics, and The American Association for the Advancement of Science. She currently serves as Councilor for the Amercan Chemical Society Colloid & Surface Chemistry Division. She holds a BA in Chemistry from Grinnell College (Phi Beta Kappa) and a PhD degree in Inorganic Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis. She joined LANL as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow in 1999, becoming a staff scientist in 2001. In 2013, she was awarded a LANL Fellows’ Prize for Research for her discovery and elaboration of non-blinking “giant” quantum dots (gQDs). In her role as staff scientist in the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT; http://www.lanl.gov/expertise/profiles/view/jennifer-hollingsworth), a US DOE Nanoscale Science Research Center and User Facility, she endeavors to advance fundamental knowledge of optically active nanomaterials, targeting the elucidation of synthesis-nanostructure-properties correlations toward the rational design of novel functional materials. Her gQD design has been extended to multiple QD and other nanostructure systems, and several are being explored for applications from ultra-stable molecular probes for advanced single-particle tracking to solid-state lighting and single-photon generation. A recent focus of her group is to advance scanning probe nanolithography for precision placement of single nanocrystals into metasurfaces and plasmonic antennas.

 

 

Todd D. Krauss received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Applied and Engineering Physics all from Cornell University, the latter under the advisement of Professor Frank Wise. Upon receiving his Ph.D. in 1998, he moved to Columbia University, serving as a postdoctoral research fellow under one of the founders of the field of nanomaterials science, Professor Louis Brus, until 2000, when he joined the Chemistry faculty at the University of Rochester as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. In 2006 he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of Chemistry and in 2008 he received a joint appointment as an Associate Professor in the Institute of Optics. In 2010 Krauss was promoted to the rank of Professor of Chemistry and Optics, and assumed directorship of the Rochester Advanced Materials Program (formerly the Materials Science graduate program). In 2013 Krauss assumed the Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Rochester. Krauss's research interests involve fundamental studies of materials at the nanometer scale, down to the single molecule level, with a specific emphasis on single walled carbon nanotubes and semiconductor quantum dots. Additionally, he is pursuing applications for these nanometer scale materials in the general areas of sustainable fuel production and nanophotonics. Krauss is a recipient of several honors and fellowships including a University of Rochester Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching (2009), a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2005), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2004), and most recently was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Tianquan (Tim) Lian received his PhD degree from University of Pennsylvania (under the supervision of Prof. Robin Hochstrasser) in 1993. After postdoctoral training with Prof. Charles B. Harris in the University of California at Berkeley, Tim Lian joined the faculty of chemistry department at Emory University in 1996. He was promoted to associate professor in 2002, full professor in 2005, Winship distinguished research Professor in 2007, and William Henry Emerson Professor of Chemistry in 2008. Tim Lian is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the Alfred P. Sloan fellowship. Tim Lian research interest is focused on ultrafast dynamics in photovoltaic and photocatalytic nanomaterials and at their interfaces.

Joseph M. Luther obtained B.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2001. At NCSU he began his research career under the direction of Salah Bedair, who was the first to fabricate a tandem junction solar cell. Luther worked on growth and characterization high-efficiency III-V materials including GaN and GaAsN. His interest in photovoltaics sent him to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to pursue graduate work. He obtained a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado while researching effects of defects in bulk semiconductors in NREL�s Measurements and Characterization Division. In 2005, He joined Art Nozik�s group at NREL and studied semiconductor nanocrystals for multiple exciton generation for which he was awarded a Ph.D. in Physics from Colorado School of Mines. As a postdoctoral fellow, he studied fundamental synthesis and novel properties of nanomaterials under the direction Paul Alivisatos at the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2009, he rejoined NREL as a senior research scientist. His research interests lie in the growth, electronic coupling and optical properties of colloidal nanocrystals and quantum dots.

Sean T. Roberts received his BS in Chemistry from the University of California Los Angeles in 2003 and his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute in Technology in 2010 for work using multidimensional infrared spectroscopy to study proton transport in liquid water with Andrei Tokmakoff. In 2010, Sean was awarded an NSF ACC-F postdoctoral fellowship and undertook a position at the University of Southern California where he worked in the groups of Stephen Bradforth and Alexander Benderskii on collaborative projects organized by the Center for Energy Nanoscience, a DOE supported Energy Frontier Research Center. In 2014, Sean started his independent career at the University of Texas at Austin where he leads a research group that uses and develops ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to understand how the mesoscopic ordering of semiconductor nanomaterials impacts their ability to manipulate energy and transport charge. Sean is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, was named a Cottrell Scholar in 2018, and has lead projects funded by the W. M. Keck Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Robert T. Welch Foundation, and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund. Sean has also won numerous teaching awards and currently leads an ACS and NSF-funded education and research program, GReen Energy At Texas (GREAT), that works with community colleges to increase student retention and degree attainment in the physical sciences.

Emily Weiss is an Associate Professor and the Irving M. Klotz Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Northwesern University. Emily earned her PhD from Northwestern in 2005, advised by Mark Ratner and Michael Wasielewski. Her graduate work focused on magnetic superexchange interactions of radical ion pairs created by electron transfer within organic donor-acceptor systems. Emily did postdoctoral research at Harvard under George M. Whitesides from 2005-2008 as a Petroleum Research Fund Postdoctoral Energy Fellow, and started her independent career at Northwestern in Fall 2008. Emily’s group studies electronic processes at organic-inorganic interfaces within colloidal and semiconductor and metal nanoparticles. The objectives of this research are to understand the mechanisms of conversion of energy from one class to another (light, heat, chemical potential, electrical potential) at interfaces, to understand the behavior of quantum confined systems far from equilibrium, and to design and synthesize nanostructures that are new combinations of organic and inorganic components.