Meet the Group
The Waz Group, August 2024
Michael R. Wasielewski is currently the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, Executive Director of the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy, and Director of the Center for Molecular Quantum Transduction, a US-DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. 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 750 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 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 |
Hohjai Lee
Hohjai Lee is an Associated Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), South Korea. He is interested in photochemistry within exciplex-forming systems as well as molecular spin qubits arising from photo-induced electron transfer. Currently, he is on a visit to Prof. Wasielewski’s research group to expand his research purview toward a combination of spectroscopy and electron spin resonance.
Dr. Lee earned his PhD degree at the University of California, Berkeley under the guidance of Prof. Graham R. Fleming. Following that, he conducted his postdoctoral investigation in the laboratory of Prof. Adam E. Cohen at Harvard.
Email: lee.hohjai@northwestern.edu
Nikolai Tcyrulnikov
Green Labs Liaison
Nikolai joined the group in September 2019 after completing his graduate studies at the Center for Photochemical Sciences in Bowling Green State University. His PhD research under supervision of Prof. R. Marshall Wilson was focused on the synthesis, experimental and computational investigation of various pyridinium salts with potential applications varying from DNA damage to molecular electronics. In the Wasielewski group, Nikolai is working on the synthesis of organic donor-acceptor systems for application in Quantum Information Science.
Email: nikolai.tcyrulnikov@northwestern.edu
Office: 847-467-7700
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
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.
Shunta Nakamura
Shunta grew up in Yokohama, Japan. He completed his graduation and Ph.D. work at Keio University with Prof. Taku Hasobe. He studied intramolecular singlet fission of covalently-linked acene dimers using organic synthesis and time-resolved spectroscopies in his Ph.D. Currently, he is interested in QIS. His hobbies are playing the guitar, watching anime, and watching baseball (NPB). His favorite baseball team is Yokohama DeNA BayStars. He joined the Wasielewski group in spring 2022.
Alberto Privitera
Alberto received his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Padova (2018). Since then, he conducted research at the University of Oxford (2017-2020), Turin (2021), and Florence (2022-2023). From November 2023, he holds a Global Marie Curie Fellowship, delocalized between the Wasielewski group at Northwestern University and the Laboratory of Molecular Magnetism at the University of Florence. His research focuses on spin photophysics for optoelectronics and quantum information. In his free time, he enjoys climbing, mountaineering, and playing jazz drums.
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.
Hannah Eckvahl
Hannah is from Rancho Cucamonga, CA. She attended UCLA where she earned a B.S. in chemistry and worked with Dr. Kendall Houk using density functional theory to study the reactivity of cycloadditions. She also worked with Dr. Miguel Garcia-Garibay to help synthesize molecular rotors. She joined the Wasielewski group in fall 2020.
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.
Oscar Huang
Oscar was born in Shenzhen, China and attended Haverford College for his undergraduate degree in chemistry. He studied exploratory synthesis of organic-inorganic hybrid materials assisted by machine learning under the supervision of Professors Alexander Norquist and Joshua Schrier. He then joined the Wasielewski group in fall 2019. His research here focuses on studying spin dynamics of materials using electron paramagnetic resonance, and connecting the exotic quantum mechanical properties of materials to potential applications in quantum information science (QIS).
Karen Ji
Karen is from Ann Arbor, MI. She attended the University of Chicago where she earned a B.S. in chemistry and worked with Professor Greg Engel. She joined the Wasielewski group in fall 2021.
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.
Elisabeth Latawiec
Green Labs Liaison
Elisabeth is from Scranton, PA. She attended Duquesne University in Pittsburgh where she earned a B.S. in chemistry and B.A. in mathematics. At Duquesne, she worked with Dr. Jeffrey Evanseck to complete an honors undergraduate thesis using density functional theory to investigate organocatalytic mechanisms. Elisabeth came to Northwestern and joined the Wasielewski group in the fall of 2020 to study spin qubit pairs in DNA hairpins.
Hoang Le
Hoang grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam. He attended Centre College in Danville, Kentucky where he earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and Physics. During his undergraduate years, Hoang did collaborative research with Professor John Anthony’s group at the University of Kentucky. His project focus on the synthesis, characterization, and photochemistry of anthradithiophene and other acene derivatives to understand their photo-oxidative stability and performance in organic electronics. Hoang joined the Wasielewski group in summer 2023.
Georgia Mantel
Safety Officer
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.
James O'Connor
James O’Connor grew up in Miami, FL before attending the University of Texas at Austin to major in Chemistry. Working under the labs of both Eric Anslyn and John Markert, James performed both novel organic synthesis on chiral compounds and nuclear magnetic resonance force microscopy respectively before graduating in early 2019 with a Bachelor of Science. James then later that year joined the Wasielewski group where he now studies Two-Dimensional Electronic Spectroscopy.
Email: jpoconnor@u.northwestern.edu
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.
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.
Graeme Copley
Graeme hails from a small village called Bailiff Bridge which sits 12 miles southwest of the city of Leeds, England. Under the supervision of Prof. Andy Benniston and Prof. Tony Harriman, Graeme received his PhD in 2010 for his thesis entitled ‘Synthesis and Characterisation of Bio-Inspired Molecular Dyads’ (Newcastle University, U.K.). Following his PhD, Graeme has carried out postdoctoral stays in the United States (Devens Gust, ASU. Anne McNeil, UM) and Japan (Atsuhiro Osuka, Kyoto University). Graeme’s work in the Waz group is related to Sustainability and Energy and Molecular Quantum Transduction. Away from work, Graeme has a huge passion for the great outdoors. Graeme’s profile picture was taken underneath the ‘Holy Ghost’ panel, located at the Great Gallery, Wayne County, Utah.
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.