Michael J. Therien
Michael J. Therien

Michael J. Therien

William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry

Overview

Our research involves the synthesis of compounds, supermolecular assemblies, nano-scale objects, and electronic materials with unusual ground-and excited-state characteristics, and interrogating these structures using state-of-the-art transient optical, spectroscopic, photophysical, and electrochemical methods. Research activities span physical inorganic chemistry, physical organic chemistry, synthetic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, spectroscopy, photophysics, excited-state dynamics, spintronics, and imaging. My laboratory: (i) designs chromophores and supermolecules that display exceptional opto-electronic properties and elucidates their excited-state dynamics, (ii) engineers highly conjugated molecular structures for optical limiting, specialized emission, and high charge mobility, (iii) designs conjugated materials and hybrid molecular-nanoscale structures for energy conversion reactions, (iv) develops molecular wires that propagate spin-polarized currents, (v) fabricates emissive nanoscale structures for in vivo optical imaging, (vi) engineers de novo transition metal cofactor-binding proteins that test light-driven biological energy transducing mechanisms and realize opto-electronic functionalities not found in nature, and (vii) designs and interrogates complex molecular and nanoscale assemblies in which ultrafast energy and charge migration reactions are controlled by quantum coherence effects.

Positions

William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

2009 Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Professor of Chemistry in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

2008 Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Member of the Duke Cancer Institute in the School of Medicine

2008 School of Medicine

Education

B.S. 1982

1982 University of St. Andrews (United Kingdom)

Ph.D. 1987

1987 University of California, San Diego

NIH Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CHEMISTRY

1990 California Institute of Technology

Publications, Grants & Awards

Offices & Contact

5330 French Family Science Cen
Durham, NC
27708
Box 90346
Durham, NC
27708-0346