2024

November: Joe visits The University of Texas – Austin (and has some amazing barbeque!). Thank you to Carlos Baiz for hosting!

Caroline presents at the WashU undergraduate research symposium and the Midstates Physical Sciences Research Symposium.

October: Joe goes on an Indiana road trip to visit Purdue and Indiana University. Thank you to Mike Reppert (Purdue) and Caroline Jarrold and Megan Thielges (IU) for hosting!

Our manuscript on the excited-state proton transfer dynamics in 3-hydroxyflavone is now published in Chem. Commun.!

Joe visits the gas phase chemical physics group at Sandia National Labs. Thank you to Tim Zwier for hosting!

August: Valerie and Joe (invited presentation) attend the Vibrational Spectroscopy GRC in Smithfield, RI.

July: Our manuscript on characterizing the interplay between ion-receptor and ion-solvent interactions in halide-receptor complexes has been accepted by PCCP!

Joe attends and presents at the Telluride workshop on Advances of Multidimensional Vibrational Spectroscopy in Water, Biology and Materials Science.

June: Joe attends and gives an invited presentation at CMDS 2024 in York, UK.

Zifan attends and presents at the 77th ISMS meeting.

Dr. Jiaye Jin from Knut Asmis’s lab in Leipzig visits the group.

Valerie and Caroline attend the Midwest Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Imaging Graduate Workshop at Lake James, IN.

Jessika gives a stellar thesis defense seminar. Dr. Dean will be starting at Intel in July.

May: Tingting wins the Weissman Award for outstanding undergraduate research in physical chemistry. Congratulations Tingting!

March: Joe visits Brown University. Thank you to Lai-Sheng Wang for hosting!

Joe presents at the ACS meeting in New Orleans.

Valerie presents at the APS meeting in Minneapolis.

Jessika accepts a position at Intel. Congrats Jessika!

February: Joe visits the University of Washington. Thank you to Anne McCoy for hosting!

Joe attends and presents at the Molecular and Ionic Clusters GRC in (very soggy) Ventura, CA.

January: Morgan Davies joins the group. Welcome Morgan!

2023

November: Joe visits Yale and Stony Brook. Thank you to Mark Johnson (Yale) and Chris Johnson (Stony Brook) for hosting!

October: Joe visits UGA. Thank you to Mike Duncan for hosting and a round of golf!

Our manuscript detailing the first 2D IR spectra of cryogenically cooled ions has been accepted to JPC Letters.

Our manuscript on the ultrafast vibrational and H atom transfer dynamics in β-diketones, in collaboration with Mark Boyer and Ned Sibert at UW-Madison, is accepted to JPCA.

September: Joe visits JILA and CU-Boulder. Thank you to Mathias Weber for hosting!

Liangyi gives an outstanding seminar and defends his dissertation. Dr. Chen has accepted a research position at Nusano beginning in October.

June: Valerie, Zifan, and Joe attend the 76th ISMS meeting at UIUC. Valerie and Zifan gave well-received presentations while Joe co-organized a mini-symposium on Spectroscopy with Cryogenic Ion Traps.

Our manuscript on ultrafast transient IR spectroscopy of cryogenically cooled ions has been accepted by JCP as a Communication. The article will be featured on the cover and was chosen as an Editor’s Pick!

March: Liangyi gives a great presentation and poster at the national ACS meeting in Indianapolis.

Our manuscript, in collaboration with Ned Sibert at UW-Madison, on computationally modeling the broad H-bonded OH and OD stretches in PCET dyad systems is accepted by JPCA!

2022

November: Joe visits UW-Madison as a McElvain Student-Invited Seminar speaker. Big thanks to Kathy Nickson of the Garand group for hosting and organizing!

Liangyi and his wife Jinping welcome their first child! All are doing well. Congratulations Liangyi and Jinping!!!

October: Joe visits Notre Dame. Thank you to Steve Corcelli for hosting!

September: Joe visits Murray State. Thank you to Jon Lyon for hosting!

August: It’s been a busy and productive summer for the group!

Liangyi attended the Molecular Interactions and Dynamics GRC while Jessika and Joe attend the Vibrational Spectroscopy GRC. Joe attended two Telluride workshops.

Pulse shapers are installed and we’re back collecting data again. We’ve collected the first pump-probe spectra of cryogenically cooled, messenger-tagged ions. Stay tuned!

June: The group attends the 75th International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy. Liangyi, Jessika, and Joe all gave presentations.

Joe and Chris Thuet win the Chemistry Department’s annual Cornhole tournament!

January: Valerie Winkler and Zifan Ma join the group. Welcome Valerie and Zifan!

Congratulations to Joe for being named a recipient of the 2022 Flygare Award!

2021

November: Our manuscript demonstrating time-domain vibrational action spectra of tagged molecular ions using ultrafast IR pulses has been accepted for publication in JPCA. 

October: Our first manuscript investigating H-bonding interactions in PCET model systems has been accepted for publication in JPCA. Congrats Liangyi!

March: Joe’s NSF CAREER proposal has been recommended for funding!  We will use our suite of spectroscopic techniques to study H-bonding interactions and track proton transport dynamics in model PCET complexes.

February: We are now collecting transient and 2D IR spectra. 

2020

July:  It’s been a monumental month for the group!

We are now fully moved into our amazing new lab space.

Our laser systems are now all installed and working great. Big thanks to Adam Huss (Coherent), Dean Guyer (LaserVision), and William Griffin (Continuum) for coming out and getting these systems up and running.

The cryostat is now cooling the ion trap down to 10 K, and nitrogen tags are sticking to our ions!

January:  Graduate student Jessika Santos joins the group! Welcome Jessika!

2019

November: Ions are being trapped and we have recorded our first mass spectrum.

October: We’ve detected our first ions!

July:  Construction has begun on our permanent lab space in McMillen 307.  Big thanks to the Loomis Lab for letting us use part of their lab as our temporary space.

January:  Liangyi Chen joins the group as our very first grad student! Welcome Liangyi!

We’ve moved into our temporary space in Louderman Hall and are now beginning to build the photofragmentation mass spectrometer.

2018

September:  Welcome to our new group website!  Check back often to see the progress being made on the renovations to our new lab space in McMillen Laboratory.