Biography
I have always been fascinated with understanding how and why the natural world works the way it does, exploring webs of cause and effect, and peeling back layers of explanation down to the atomic and molecular level. For me, studying chemistry is a natural expression of that curiosity, and I love sharing my passion with students. I’ve been teaching chemistry in one form or another for some 20 years, and my favorite part is interacting with students — teaching and mentoring them, inciting their curiosity, getting to know them, and learning from them.
Chemistry also provides us with key tools to address one of the greatest challenges facing humankind in the 21st century: anthropogenic climate change. My research is focused on developing new materials that can be used to generate carbon-free and 100% renewable energy from sunlight that are cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Students in my research group use simple and scalable synthesis methods to make working solar cells from low-cost, abundant, and non-toxic materials. Our goal is to discover new materials, use nanotechnology to transform low-cost materials into high-performing ones, and to characterize their physical and photoelectrochemical properties to better understand structure-function relationships in photocatalytic solar cells.
When I’m not in the classroom or in the laboratory, you’ll often find me rock climbing, or perhaps camping, hiking, backpacking, snowboarding, or surfing when I get a chance!