Research

Seeing molecular behavior from more than one angle.

My research combines polarization-sensitive spectroscopy, femtosecond measurements, electronic-structure calculations, and scientific software to connect molecular structure with excited-state behavior.

01

Symmetry and polarization

Magneto-optical activity in molecular systems

I investigate how peripheral substitution, metal identity, and molecular symmetry tune magnetic circular dichroism intensity and sign in porphyrins and coordination complexes. This work combines absorption and MCD measurements with electronic-structure calculations to identify experimentally useful design rules.

In parallel, I redeveloped lab-built CD/MCD instrumentation to extend measurements into the near-UV, improve optical fluence, and suppress polarization artifacts in weak differential signals.

  • CD and MCD
  • Polarization optics
  • Porphyrin photophysics
  • DFT and TDDFT
02

Dynamics and mechanism

Ultrafast photochemistry of chiral molecules

I use femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy to follow photochemical inversion in enantiomerically resolved chiral sulfoxides. Chiral HPLC and steady-state CD establish the molecular starting point; pump-probe measurements then reveal short- and long-lived excited-state features associated with the reaction pathway.

I also rebuilt acquisition and analysis workflows for variable pump wavelengths and dispersive probe detection, coordinating delay stages, optical chopping, spectrometer readout, pulse sequencing, normalization, and data storage in Python.

  • Transient absorption
  • Chiral HPLC
  • Steady-state CD
  • Kinetic analysis
03

Tools and reproducibility

Scientific software as research infrastructure

I develop reusable Python workflows for instrument control, spectral processing, kinetic fitting, mass spectrometry, and publication-quality visualization. These tools reduce repetitive analysis and make complex experimental workflows easier to inspect, teach, and reproduce.

My computational work uses ORCA and Gaussian to assign electronic transitions, compare calculated and experimental spectra, and evaluate vibronic contributions to optical response.

  • Python
  • NumPy and SciPy
  • lmfit
  • ORCA and Gaussian

Open projects

Software built around real experimental work.

Selected repositories are maintained publicly so methods can be inspected, adapted, and improved.

Spectroscopy

pump-probe

Python tools for pump-probe spectroscopy acquisition and analysis.

Python · active 2026
View repository
Instrumentation

CD-MCD

Documentation and software for circular and magnetic circular dichroism instrumentation.

Python
View repository
Analysis

MSFtools

Reusable tools developed for the UNM Mass Spectrometry Facility.

Python · active 2026
View repository
Visualization

MOplot

Plot and annotate molecular-orbital energy diagrams from structured CSV data.

Python
View repository
Training

DFT workshop

Practical notes for running and interpreting Gaussian calculations at UNM's Center for Advanced Research Computing.

Gaussian · shell
View repository
Profile

More on GitHub

Additional spectroscopy, visualization, and data-processing projects.

Open source
View GitHub profile