Meet the Group
The Waz Group, May 2025
Michael R. Wasielewski is currently the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, Director of the Institute for Quantum Information Research and Engineering (INQUIRE), and Director of the Center for Molecular Quantum Transduction, a US-DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. He is also a faculty member in the Applied Physics Program. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. His research has resulted in over 825 publications and focuses on light-driven processes in molecules and materials, artificial photosynthesis, molecular electronics, quantum information science, ultrafast optical spectroscopy, and time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. His honors and awards include membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Prize, the Josef Michl American Chemical Society Award in Photochemistry; the Porter Medal for Photochemistry; the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society; the Royal Society of Chemistry Physical Organic Chemistry Award; the Royal Society of Chemistry Environment Prize; the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award of the American Chemical Society; the Bruker Prize in EPR Spectroscopy; the International EPR Society Silver Medal in Chemistry; the Chemical Pioneer Award of the American Institute of Chemists; and the Humboldt Research Award.
Ryan Young
Ryan M. Young obtained his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006. He then studied anion dynamics using time-resolved photoelectron imaging at the University of California, Berkeley in the group of Daniel Neumark, receiving his Ph.D. in 2011. From there, he joined Michael Wasielewki’s group at Northwestern University as a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Environmental Chemistry Postdoctoral Fellow. Ryan directs research activities within the Trienens Institute, ensuring a safe, productive, and collaborative research environment.
Email: ryan.young@northwestern.edu
Office: 847-467-5832
CV | Google Scholar |
Matthew Krzyaniak
Matthew D. Krzyaniak is an Electron Paramagnetic Resonance(EPR) specialist in Michael Wasielewski’s lab. His research interests include the application of EPR to the field of quantum information science, and the spin dynamics of radical and triplet pairs for use in solar energy.
He continued his studies at Michigan State University in the group of John McCracken and received his Ph.D. in 2010. At MSU he utilized advanced Electron Paramagnetic Resonance spectroscopic techniques to characterize the active site of metallo-enzymes. Following graduation he joined the group of Michael K. Bowman at The University of Alabama as a Postdoctoral Fellow and continued to master EPR spectroscopy by studying the spin relaxation of radicals and radical intermediates trapped within proteins. From there he joined Michael R. Wasielewski’s group at Northwestern University as a Research Associate in 2013.
Email: mdkrzyaniak@northwestern.edu
Office: 847-467-1896
CV | Google Scholar |
Ranadeb Ball
Ranadeb is originally from West Bengal, India. He received his M.Sc. from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where he studied electrochemical water splitting and charge storage devices using electrochemistry and Confocal Raman microscopy. After that, he moved to US to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry at University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Prof. Jessica M. Anna. During the doctoral study, he investigated small molecules and materials with two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy (2DIR) and 2DIR Spectroelectrochemistry. He joined Wasielewski group in 2025 to study the molecular spin Qbit system with ultrafast spectroscopy. In his spare time, he likes to listen to music, watch movies, and sing.
Sagnik Chakrabarti
Sagnik grew up in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. After completing his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemistry at Presidency University (2017) and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (2019) respectively, he moved to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 2019. At Illinois, he worked under the tutelage of Prof. Liviu Mirica, where he focused on the isolation and reactivity of highly reactive Ni(I) and Pd(I) coordination compounds relevant to cross-coupling catalysis. He joined the Wasielewski group in September 2025 to further his understanding of radical pairs relevant to an orthogonal field – quantum information science – through a combined lens of synthesis and spectroscopy.
Lihua Chen
Lihua grew up in Sichuan, China, and earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Shanghai Jiao Tong University under the supervision of Professor Shaodong Zhang. During her doctoral studies, she focused on the synthesis of chiral organic cages and the investigation of their photophysical properties. She joined the Wasielewski group in April 2025 to study photocatalysis using advanced spectroscopic techniques. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to music and watching movies.
Email: lihua.chen@northwestern.edu
Ravi Kishore Dakoju
Ravi Kishore grew up in Andhra Pradesh, India. He earned his Ph.D. in Organic Synthesis from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India, under the guidance of Prof. G. Satyanarayana. His doctoral research focused on developing new domino reactions for constructing diverse carbo- and heterocyclic frameworks. Following his Ph.D., he worked as a postdoctoral research associate with Dr. Jean-Luc Ayitou at the University of Illinois Chicago from 2023 to 2024, where he contributed to the development of synthetic organic methodologies and their application to various chromophores. In January 2025, he joined the Wasielewski group at Northwestern University to advance his research further.
Email: ravi.dakoju@northwestern.edu
Yaoyao Han
Yaoyao grew up in Shandong, China. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) under the supervision of Dr. Kaifeng Wu. Her doctoral thesis focused on investigating light-induced phenomena in semiconductor quantum dots using advanced time-resolved spectroscopic techniques. She joined Wasielewski group in June 2023.
Email: yaoyao.han@northwestern.edu
Jaehwan Kim
Jaehwan fares from across the Pacific Ocean, where he grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. He went to Princeton University for his undergraduate studies, where he obtained his A.B. in chemistry with a certificate in engineering in biology in 2018, during which he investigated the theoretical efficiencies of combining biotic and abiotic CO2 conversion. He started his doctoral studies at Cornell University in 2019 under the mentorship of Professor Phillip Milner, where he primarily investigated the relationships between structural properties and electrochemical behavior of redox-active organic materials using energy storage metrics, and finished in May 2024. He moved to Evanston to work with the Wasielewski group in July 2024, where he is starting on quantum sensors and studying new radical-chromophore pairs as potential qudit platforms. In his spare time, he likes to swim, learn foreign languages, and listen to a range of musical theater pieces.
Email: kim.jaehwan@northwestern.edu
Jinseok Kim
Jinseok was born in Seoul, Korea. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Yonsei University and completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Dongho Kim. During his Ph.D., his research concentrated on elucidating excited state behaviors and structural dynamics by excited state aromaticity in the conjugated molecular systems, employing diverse time-resolved spectroscopic techniques. He joined Wasielewski group in November 2023.
Email: jinseok.kim@northwestern.edu
Shubham Tiwari
Shubham was born and raised in India. He pursued his M.Sc. at the University of Allahabad in 2019. After completing his masters, he moved to the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay for PhD. He obtained his PhD in December 2024, focusing on synthesis and studies of nonaromatic expanded porphyrinoids under the supervision of Prof. M. Ravikanth. In March 2025, he joined Prof. Wasielewski’s group at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral fellow.
Junhang Duan
Junhang grew up in Xi’an, China. She obtained her B.Sc. degree at Beijing Jiaotong University where she conducted research on nano-optics under the supervision of Professor Jun Zhu in Tsinghua University. She then moved to Brown University and obtained her M.Sc degree in physics under the guidance of Professor Gang Xiao. Her master thesis focused on studying spin dynamics of magnetic nanostructures such as skyrmions and domain walls. She began pursuing a Ph.D. in applied physics at Northwestern University in Fall 2023 and joined the Wasielewski group in November 2023.
Ethan Fisher
Ethan is from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and graduated from Michigan State University in 2025 with a B.S. in Chemistry and a secondary major in Japanese. At Michigan State, he worked with Dr. Aaron Odom, focusing on the synthesis of asymmetric titanium-based catalysts and their use in three-component coupling reactions.
Natalia Goroncy
Natalia comes from Laramie, WY. She graduated from MIT with a B.S. in Physics, and worked under Professor Robert Griffin in the field of NMR and EPR spectroscopy in the Chemistry department. She joined the Wasielewski group in 2024.
Chelsie Greene
Chelsie was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. She completed her undergraduate degree at Washington State University where she earned a B.S. in chemistry and a minor in mathematics. At WSU, she worked on a bioremediation project involving the metabolization of the anthropogenic chelator ethylenediaminetetraacetate (EDTA) through the epp-emo pathway from Chelativorans sp. BNC1 under Prof. Kang. She then came to Northwestern in the Fall of 2020, where she joined the Wasielewski group as a co-advised student with Prof. Schaller. Her work in the Wasielewski group involves the study of spin physics of semiconducting nanoplatelets for quantum information science application. Outside of lab, Chelsie enjoys cooking vegetarian food, hanging out with her dog, and spending time outdoors.
Kyle Kairys
Kyle grew up in Rockaway, New Jersey. He attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish. During his undergraduate, Kyle worked with Prof. Raphael Ribeiro focusing on Polariton dynamics. He also completed an REU at Rice University working with Matthew Jones’ group on inorganic synthesis. He also worked as a visiting researcher with the Herrera lab at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile working on screening for non-linear optical properties. Kyle began pursuing his PhD at Northwestern in Fall 2023 and is a joint student between the Wasielewski and Tempelaar groups.
Georgia Mantel
Safety Coordinator
Georgia is from Lebanon, OH and graduated from Miami University in 2022 with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and a minor in physics. At Miami she worked with Professor Scott Hartley, studying chemical fuels that initiate the formation of nonequilibrium covalent bonds. She joined the Wasielewski group in 2022.
Amanda Nguyen
Amanda grew up in San Jose, California and obtained a B.S. in Chemistry-Materials Science at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2024. At UCLA, she worked under Professor Benjamin Schwartz to study the effects of various chemical doping conditions and polymer morphologies on the electronic properties of doped organic semiconductors. She started her PhD in chemistry at Northwestern, and joined the Waz group, in the fall of 2024.
Jon Palmer
Jon grew up in Charlotte, NC, and received his BS in chemistry from North Carolina State University. During his undergraduate, he worked under Professor Phil Castellano to investigate metal-organic chromophore photophysics and energy-transfer phenomenon for use in photochemical upconversion and photocatalysis. Jon began pursuing a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Northwestern University in Fall 2021, and is a joint student between the Wasielewski and Weiss groups. His research focuses on merging the spin physics of semiconductor nanocrystals with molecules and molecular-like defects for applications in quantum information science.
Kate Peinkofer
Kate is from Sebastopol, CA and graduated from Hamilton College in 2022 where she majored in chemistry with minors in physics and music. At Hamilton, she worked under Wesley Kramer studying the photophysics of ruthenium complexes for photodynamic therapy. She joined the Wasielewski group in 2022.
Samuel Tyndall
Samuel is from Fort Wayne, IN and graduated from Miami University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and a co-major in Energy. At Miami, he did mechanistic organic chemistry research in bond-forming reductive elimination of well-defined Cu(III) complexes for late-stage trifluoromethylation. He undertook an internship in the summer of 2020 at Idaho National Laboratory as a Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Intern (SULI). He joined the Waz group for a zero-year in the summer of 2021 and subsequently fully joined as a graduate student in the fall where he now works on the synthesis, characterization, and spectroscopy of covalent light-harvesting chromophore models for symmetry-breaking charge separation and singlet fission.
Yixi Wang
Yixi was born in Suzhou, China. He attended Peking University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. At PKU, he worked under Prof. Zhenfeng Xi, studying the activation and transformation of nitrogen gas using coordination chemistry. In 2024, Yixi came to Northwestern and joined the Wasielewski group.
Parker Watts
Parker grew up on the Gulf Coast near Mobile, Alabama, which is home to some of the most biodiversity in North America. He graduated from The University of Texas at Dallas with a B.S. in physics where he worked under Prof. Joe Izen researching particle physics at BaBar. He has worked under Prof. Onur Hosten at IST Austria in quantum optics and as a DIANA Fellow at CERN. He is interested in renewable energy, and he enjoys playing music and hiking. He began his PhD in physics at Northwestern in Fall 2022, and he joined the Wasielewski group in Summer 2023.
Qinghua Yang
Qinghua grew up in Chongqing, China, which is known for hot pot. She obtained a B.S. in chemistry at Nankai University and a B.E. in chemical engineering at Tianjin University in 2022. While at TJU, she worked on drug delivery with Prof. Yumiao Zhang. In 2021, she did an internship in the Stoddart group at Northwestern University working on electron-catalysed molecular recognition. She joined the Wasielewski group in the fall of 2022.
Arianna Cantarella
Arianna Cantarella was born in Parma, Italy, and earned her Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Parma in 2023, with a thesis conducted at the Theory and Simulation of Materials Laboratory at EPFL under Prof. Nicola Marzari, titled High-throughput detection and restoring of missing hydrogens in inorganic crystal structure databases. Currently a PhD student in Prof. Stefano Carretta’s Spin-based Quantum Science group, Arianna’s research combines first-principles calculations with modeling of effective Hamiltonians to study the electronic structures and properties of organic compounds, contributing to the characterization of chiral molecules within the European Synergy Grant CASTLEe project.
Simone Chicco
Simone Chicco was born in Parma, Italy, and earned his Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Parma in 2019, with a thesis on magnetic neutron scattering conducted at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in Oxford, UK. He completed his PhD in 2022 at the same University, focusing on the coherent and incoherent dynamics of molecular nanomagnets studied through magnetic resonance and inelastic neutron and X-ray scattering. Currently a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Stefano Carretta’s Spin based quantum technologies group, Simone is part of a European Synergy Grant investigating electron transfer through chiral molecules and spin selectivity using a novel time-resolved NMR technique integrating optical irradiation.
Ena Yun
Ena grew up in Daegu, Korea. She earned her master’s degree from the Prof. Hohjai Lee group at GIST (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology) in Korea, and she is currently in her Ph.D. program. During her master’s studies, she focused on exciplex systems, using electrochemical measurements, steady-state spectroscopy, and time-resolved spectroscopy. She also performed DFT calculations to investigate exciplex geometries and simulate exciplex emission spectra.
In January 2025, she joined the Wasielewski group as a visiting scholar. Her research goal is to develop new molecular systems for quantum information applications, based on single cocrystals of stable radicals and chromophores.
Email: ena@northwestern.edu
Sebastian Kopp
Sebastian M. Kopp obtained his B. Sc. in Chemistry at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Oxford, UK, under the joint supervision of Prof. Christiane Timmel and Prof. Harry Anderson. During his PhD, Sebastian used advanced EPR spectroscopy in combination with optical spectroscopy and synthesis to investigate and control charge and spin delocalization in porphyrin nanomaterials. He joined the Wasielewski group in April 2024 to work on the application of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to the field of quantum information science.
Brian Phelan
Brian T. Phelan obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 2009 and his master’s degree in teaching chemistry in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He taught high school chemistry and physics from 2011-2013 in Monticello, Illinois before pursuing his doctorate. He obtained his doctorate in physical chemistry in 2019 from Northwestern University under the supervision of Michael R. Wasielewski. During his doctoral program he employed pump-probe and pump-pump-probe optical and vibrational spectroscopies to study the photophysical processes that occur in covalent molecular assemblies. He then worked as a postdoctoral appointee for Lin X. Chen at Argonne National Laboratory from 2019-2022 where he employed pump-probe optical and x-ray transient absorption spectroscopy and impulsive time-domain Raman scattering spectroscopy to study the excited-state electronic and nuclear dynamics of transition-metal complexes. In 2022, he returned to the Wasielewski group as a research associate in the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern where he works on pump-probe microscopy measurements using entangled photons for application in quantum information science.
Keller Paulson
Keller is the Wasielewski Group and CMQT program coordinator. He assists with the daily functions of the group, assisting in operations, communications, and administrative support. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music with concentration on Percussion Performance and Jazz Studies from Colorado State University.
Sarina McBride
Sarina is the Trienens/CMQT research administrator. Sarina performs administrative maintenance, compliance and review of Trienens sponsored research awards. She has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Oregon and received her Masters of Business Administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.