Thanks to Prof. David Blank for hosting my remote visit to the University of Minnesota. It was a pleasure to meet some of the faculty there, and particularly fun to have some great interactions with a few of their gradstudents!  Hopefully I’ll get to visit Minnesota in person some day!

James’ new perspective article, Just Scratching the Surface: In Situ and Surface-Specific Characterization of Perovskite Nanocrystal Growth, discusses the advances needed to gain a deeper insight into perovskite nanocrystal surfaces. From the 64+ ACS journals, a single article is chosen each day as the ACS Editors’ Choice, and we are excited that James’ work has been selected. Congratulations James!

Thanks to Prof. Qiang Cui for the invitation to give a physical chemistry seminar at BU. I had some great interactions with the faculty there. Maybe someday I will get to meet them all in-person!

Many thanks to Prof. Shunji Egusa and the physics department at UNC Charlotte for the seminar invitation. It was fun to interact with all of the terrific students who attended!

Many thanks to Prof. Wei Zhao and Prof. Steve Baldelli for the invitation to speak at their symposium on Advances in Applied Nonlinear Spectroscopy. It has been an exciting symposium, and I certainly appreciate the hybrid format. We were able to fit in a taste of Zach’s exciting new work on the P3HT project!

A warm welcome to Laila, who will be working with us for the remainder of the summer and starting as a rotation student in our lab for fall quarter. Laila will be learning to synthesize some mixed-halide perovskite nanocrystals and measuring them during growth and during photo-induced halide segregation. We’re looking forward to working with you, Laila, welcome to Eugene!

Best wishes to Sonja, who volunteered in our lab as a highschool student. Sonja made significant progress in improving our synthesis of mixed-halide nanocrystals during her time here, and we are looking forward to seeing her research career take off when she joins a new lab at Syracuse University. We will miss your great questions at group meeting, the photos of your baking creations, and your reports on Mistoffelees the cat and your neighborhood garbage bear!

Today was Brandon’s last official day in our group, before he heads off to pursue his doctorate at UIUC. We will miss Brandon, his endless supply of interesting trivia, his amazing food at our potlucks, and his interesting wardrobe, which always kept us guessing! We’re thankful for all he has contributed to the lab, and we’re looking forward to seeing all of the great science he does at UIUC!

A big congrats to Laura, who was selected for the Anita and Friedhelm Baitis Scholarship! Laura was one of only two awardees from the Chemistry Department this year. This is a well-earned recognition of Laura’s stellar academic work at UO, and will support her research in the lab this summer. Looking forward to a fun summer and seeing everything Laura can achieve! Read more about it here.

Many thanks to Prof. Chris Bardeen and Prof. Suggy Jang for organizing a great Telluride conference on excitons, and for the kind invitation. In addition to Kelly, Madi, and Morgan’s work on pseudoisocyanine aggregates, I also added in Zach’s impressive new SSTA measurements during the annealing of donor-acceptor bulk heterojunctions! Thanks for pulling that together, Zach! What a great way to end this academic year.