About
A spectroscopist working where bulk and interface diverge
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, where I work with Prof. Carlos R. Baiz on hydrogen-bond dynamics of water at plasmonic electrode surfaces and on polaritonic control of molecular behaviour.
My research asks a single question in several settings: how does the local hydrogen-bond and solvation environment govern transport and reactivity? Steady-state methods such as FTIR, Raman and NMR average over exactly the motions that matter. I therefore work with a matched pair of vibrational tools — conventional two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy to resolve the ultrafast structural dynamics of bulk electrolytes and solutions, and surface-enhanced 2D IR together with surface-enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy to isolate the corresponding dynamics at the metal–liquid interface under operating conditions. Measuring bulk and interface with the same molecular reporters is what makes it possible to say precisely how confinement, an electrode or an optical cavity changes molecular behaviour.
That approach has taken me through four research settings. I completed my PhD at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science with Prof. Prashant Chandra Singh, combining infrared spectroscopy, molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry to understand weak noncovalent interactions in fluorinated and atmospherically relevant systems. At Korea University's Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics I worked with Prof. Minhaeng Cho on water structure in biocompatible polymers, free-volume elements in amorphous polymers, ion transport in lithium-ion electrolytes, and a wavelet-based denoising method for ultrafast spectra. At the University of Michigan I worked with Prof. Kevin J. Kubarych on enzyme catalysis under vibrational strong coupling. Each move added a technique and a class of system, and the combination — interfacial electrochemistry, confined electrolytes, and polaritonic chemistry, all read out by ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy — is the basis of the independent programme I am now building.
How the work developed
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2024– present
The University of Texas at Austin
Postdoctoral Researcher
Building surface-specific ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy of electrified interfaces. I measure hydrogen-bond dynamics of water at plasmonic electrode surfaces by surface-enhanced two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy, and study how plasmonic nanocrystal metasurfaces and optical cavities alter molecular vibrational behaviour.
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2023– 2024
University of Michigan
Postdoctoral Researcher
Worked on enzyme catalysis under vibrational strong coupling — placing environmentally and biologically relevant reactions inside an optical cavity and asking, with 2D IR as the readout, whether hybridising a molecular vibration with a cavity mode changes how the reaction proceeds.
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2019– 2023
Korea University
Research Professor
Four and a half years across four connected problems: water structure in biocompatible polymers and hydrogels, free-volume elements in amorphous polymers, ion transport in lithium-ion electrolytes and separators, and a new wavelet-based denoising method for ultrafast spectroscopy. This is where my work moved from noncovalent interactions in bulk liquids toward confined and functional environments.
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2018– 2018
RIKEN
Visiting Researcher
A short visiting appointment using heterodyne-detected vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy to study how DNA reorganises water at lipid membrane interfaces — my first work on a genuinely interfacial, rather than bulk, system.
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2013– 2018
Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
PhD, Chemistry
Doctoral work combining infrared spectroscopy, molecular dynamics simulation and quantum chemistry to understand weak noncovalent interactions — organic fluorine as a hydrogen-bond acceptor, dispersive fluorous contacts, and the unconventional bonding in hydrated carbonyl sulfide clusters. Fourteen publications, including several as first author.
Toward an independent programme
The three strands I have built — interfacial electrochemistry, confined electrolytes, and polaritonic and plasmonic control — share instrumentation, a common analysis framework, and a single organising idea: that interfacial hydrogen-bond and solvation dynamics govern transport and reactivity.
As an independent researcher I intend to establish a laboratory centred on voltage-dependent surface-enhanced 2D IR and operando SEIRAS, a pairing that remains beyond the reach of all but a handful of laboratories. The most immediately feasible directions — cosolvent- and potential-controlled electrocatalysis, and operando battery-separator dynamics — each rest on published proof of concept. The higher-risk polaritonic work is deliberately staged behind them, and the enzyme experiment behind that, so that each step is only attempted once the preceding one has produced a reproducible result in my own hands.
What I want most from an independent position is the ability to follow this method wherever it is most informative, and to train students at the intersection of ultrafast spectroscopy, electrochemistry, materials and quantum science — a combination that is unusual, and that I have had to assemble across four research settings.