The Musser Research Group

A big welcome to David Bain, our newest graduate student! Pandemic permitting, David will be spearheading our new research efforts into photocatalysis.

The lab is shuttered for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis, but at least everyone is keeping safe. Looking ahead to when we re-open, we plan to hit the ground running and there will plenty of exciting opportunities for an ambitious postdoc to get involved. That’s right, we’re hiring for the start of Fall semester! See ‘opportunities’ page for details. UPDATE 15th May: We are no longer taking applications.

A big welcome to Aaron and Trevor, our first undergraduate group members! They’ve taken on the challenge of helping get the lab up and running this semester.

This year I’m a Conference Co-Chair of #SPIEOpticsPhotonics 2020, together with Christian Nielsen and Dan Congreve. Our conference is: Physical Chemistry of Semiconductor Materials and Interfaces, taking place in San Diego at the end of August. It will explore the fundamental processes of emerging and established semiconductor materials, and their interfaces, from bulk to the nanoscale. Check out the website and submit your paper before 12 February: http://bit.ly/NanoEng2020

Our optical tables have finally been delivered, with plenty of room for exciting science! We should really get some optics now…

Just returned from the Molecular Quantum Technology 2019 workshop at the ‘end of the world’. Or pretty close, the southern tip of mainland Chile. A stimulating and inspiring look at spin-spin interactions in organic materials, entangled photon spectroscopy, quantum states in single molecules and atoms and how to control all these with materials design and light-matter interactions. Already looking forward to the next workshop!

Daniel’s paper on enhanced triplet-triplet annihilation in organic microcavities has just been published in Chemical Science, chosen for 2019 HOT Article Collection and highlighted as a Pick of the Week! This is an important step – in this work we showed that polaritons can be used to alter the fates even of states that are not directly involved in the interaction. Expect even bigger things to come! Read the article for yourself here, and see press coverage by the Cornell Chronicle here.

A big welcome to Soham and Scott, my first Cornell students! Looking forward to some exciting science ahead.

Antonis and Steven’s paper on a new mechanism of singlet fission in a tetracene dimer was just accepted in JACS! Controllable coherence, non-Kasha emission, CT states that shift the ‘wrong’ way – this is one of our strangest dimers yet! Have a look.