BioLEC was delighted to host Professor Juan Duchimaza Heredia at Princeton Chemistry Department this summer as part of the Visiting Faculty Research Partnership. Prof. Duchimaza Heredia is an Assistant Professor at Emmanuel College, and he brought two undergraduate students, Gwyn Gagnon and Megan Reilly, to work with Greg Scholes and the members of his lab through June and July.
Prof. Duchimaza Heredia’s research group computationally studies the photophysical properties of carbon dots, which are zero-dimensional fluorescent or phosphorescent carbon nanostructures, where the particle size is less than 10nm. Whilst the emission from carbon dots is tunable, the mechanism by which they fluoresce or phosphoresce is not well understood, so the group’s computational work aims to help resolve some of the open questions.
Both Greg and Juan felt that they got a lot out of the summer’s partnership – for Greg, insights in to a field and materials he hadn’t previously considered, with photophysical properties that could be put to many uses; for Juan, the connection with an ultrafast spectroscopy group who could provide new directions for his work, and for his students, the opportunity to experience a summer of research firsthand.
The Visiting Faculty Research Partnership will be seeking applicants for summer 2025 from late fall 2024.