Physical Chemistry Seminar: Professor Justin Caram, UCLA

Physical Chemistry Seminar: Professor Justin Caram, UCLA (Host: Fang Liu)

**This seminar is available for in-person attendance.**

About the Seminar

"Chemical physics informed design of chromophores for shortwave infrared imaging and quantum measurement"

The near and shortwave infrared spectral window provides fantastic contrast in complex environments, through skin, tissue, fog and foliage.  However, there are few organic chromophores which absorb and emit in this window, and those that do have very low quantum yields. To systematically improve chromophores in the SWIR we turn to fundamental chemical physics, designing more efficient radiative emission, or designing out non-radiative loss pathways. These insights have led us to leverage new insight into chromophore self-assembly and J-aggregate design principles to make infrared emissive materials.  A separate problem is the chemical design of chromophores which can be prepared into specific quantum states, sensitive to local electromagnetic fields.  We will discuss our efforts to create highly isolated electronic transitions which can be used for quantum enhanced measurement in solution.

About the Speaker

Professor Justin Caram grew up in Allentown Pennsylvania and completed his undergraduate degree in Chemistry at Harvard.  He moved on to UChicago for his PhD under the direction of Greg Engel, where he studied quantum coherence in photosynthetic and nanomaterial systems.  Professor Caram's postdoctoral studies were with Moungi Bawendi at MIT, where he studied highly coherent excitons in molecular aggregates and infrared emissive nanocrystals.  Currently, he is an assistant professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, where his group studies the extremes of how molecules and materials interact with light in the visible and shortwave infrared spectral window.  In this process they develop new nanomaterials and develop new tools focused on resolving the dynamics of the emitted photon stream.  

IMAGE COURTESY OF PROF. JUSTIN CARAM