Last week Aleesha and Rana represented the group at the Strong Coupling with Organic Molecules Conference 2025 (SCOM5) at the University of Southern Denmark. Aleesha gave a talk on her studies of the ultrafast spectroscopy of polaritons, and Rana presented a poster on polariton-enhanced energy transfer. By all accounts they did an excellent job, and Rana won the Best Poster award – great work!

Well quite a lot has happened since last October…

We’ve had the first two successful PhD defenses in the LMG group – massive congratulations to Tom Khazanov and David Bain! And several of our current and former undergraduates also graduated, with most now off to graduate school – Sean Griffin (MSE), Angie Huang (C&CB), Ranya Benchaaboune (C&CB), Ryan Pinard (C&CB), Jinwoo Jung (C&CB) & Anthony Lara (C&CB). Congrats to all of you, and best of luck as you move on to bigger and better things!

We also welcomed a new Postdoc, Rafa Muñoz-Mármol, on a Marie-Curie postdoctoral fellowship in partnership with Guilio Cerullo at Politecnico di Milano. We’re looking forward to pushing the limits of polariton photophysics together!

Our collaborative projects and in-house projects continue to bear fruit, with a handful of exciting new papers accepted since the Fall, including a formidable new model of exciton-polariton densities of states, the first report of strong coupling with magic-sized clusters, a novel photo-triggered approach to carbon capture and release, and a recurrence of my beloved polyene photophysics in polymers from Helen Tran. Check them all out on the Publications page! Even more are on the way…