Arumugam Jayaraman

Before joining the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Dr. Jayaraman built a notable career in experimental inorganic chemistry, with a special focus on organometallic and sustainable main-group chemistry. His academic journey, spanning an M.Sc., Ph.D., and two postdoctoral fellowships, provided him with a wealth of hands-on experience and a strong foundation in computational chemistry, enriched by international research in Canada and Germany. To date, Dr. Jayaraman has published 30 research articles in well-reputed international journals, and has also filed a US patent on his discovery made during his PhD.

Throughout his training, Dr. Jayaraman leveraged his expertise to investigate a diverse array of research projects centered on the development of earth-abundant, cost-effective, and environmentally benign main-group compounds. His pursuit of sustainable solutions led to important advancements in catalysis and the promotion of greener chemical processes.

Notably, his work as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Holger Braunschweig at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany, supported by prestigious awards (NSERC and Alexander von HumboldtAwards ), focused on the synthesis, reactivity, and computational characterization of low-valent boron compounds, including diborenes—boron-based analogues of alkenes. During his first postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Frédéric-Georges Fontaine at Université Laval in Canada, he designed industrial-scale, greener processes for the C–H borylation and hydroboration of heteroarenes using robust boron-/nitrogen-based frustrated Lewis pair catalysts. Impressively, this research was adopted by a fine-chemical company in Canada.

Dr. Jayaraman’s doctoral studies with Prof. Brian T. Sterenberg at the University of Regina, Canada, focused on preparing transition-metal-complexed, highly Lewis acidic, low-coordinate phosphorus compounds, known as phosphenium ions, and examining their interactions with less-nucleophilic unsaturated hydrocarbons. Earlier, as a master’s student with Prof. Allan L.L. East at the same institution, he conducted computational mechanistic studies on organometallic and organic reactions, including the rearrangement of norbornadiene to an alkylidene within a tungsten coordination sphere and the permanganate oxidation of organic sulfides.

Collectively, Dr. Jayaraman’s multifaceted international training and research have uniquely equipped him to advance the frontiers of inorganic and sustainable chemistry at UNLV.

Azimrh Zare Harofteh

Dr. Zare Harofteh's research spans both fundamental and applied topics, including the development of air quality prediction models, atmospheric chemistry (such as the evolution of chemical composition in wildfire plumes), fire process modeling, fire-atmosphere interactions, and environmental justice in terms of air pollution exposure. She utilizes a combination of field data, remote sensing, modeling, and machine learning techniques in her work. Before joining DRI, she spent five years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and the EPA Research Office. In these positions, she developed, evaluated, and integrated gas- and aerosol-phase chemical mechanisms into atmospheric chemical transport models, which have been applied in studies such as assessing the impact of emission reduction policies on atmospheric chemistry. Her other research interests include the interactions between biogenic emissions, air quality, and climate change, which she explored during her PhD research at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Dr. Zare Harofteh also holds a faculty appointment with the Atmospheric Science Graduate Program at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she contributes to teaching and mentoring students.

Hiroshi Sawada

My research interests encompass experimental investigations of High Energy Density (HED) Science, particularly focusing on short pulse laser-solid interactions, relativistic electron generation, hard x-ray generation, and fast electron transport, all of which are relevant to laser fusion schemes such as Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and Fast Ignition (FI). The plasma conditions created by high-power lasers are expected to reach temperatures in the millions of degrees and densities above that of solid matter. I am particularly interested in using x-ray diagnostics (including x-ray spectroscopy, absorption spectroscopy, and x-ray imaging) to investigate these plasmas. This approach aids in understanding complex physical phenomena like the equation of state, phase transitions, radiation transport, shock wave heating, and compression in states of matter known as warm dense matter. Additionally, I am interested in the physics of charged particles generated by high-power, short-pulse lasers. The characterization and potential applications of these relativistic particles are also central to my research interests.

Sarrah Dunham-Cheatham

I am a research scientist with a background in environmental chemistry, geochemistry, and soil science. I am especially interested in applying bench-scale experiments and molecular level characterizations to understand field-scale behavior and fate of environmental contaminants and compounds.

Kevin Heintz

My specialty is data acquisition for groundwater and hydrometeorological applications, especially remote environmental sensing and aquifer characterization.

Other research interests include numerical modeling of hydraulics and heat transport as well as evaluating the functionality of springs and riparian areas.

Kathleen Rodrigues

Kathleen is a Quaternary geochronologist that specializes in radiation exposure dating techniques including optically stimulated luminescence, thermally stimulated luminescence and electron spin resonance. Her research interests are focused on the development and application of luminescence dating methods to address questions in Quaternary geomorphology, paleoclimatology, and archaeology. Her recent work has focused primarily on the development of novel methods for dating eruption events in the Great Basin and defining the timescales over which tephra reworking occurs in the landscape.

David Leitner

My current research interests include theoretical and computational studies of energy flow in molecules, particularly in biological systems, and its influence on chemical reaction kinetics and thermal transport. Other research interests include theoretical approaches to address thermal conduction in nanoscale systems, and computational studies of terahertz spectroscopy and dynamics of solvated biomolecules.

Natia Frank

Prof. Natia L. Frank received her Bachelor’s degree with Honors from Bard College in 1987 (Chemistry, Math, Music), an M.Sc. in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1989), and Ph.D at the University of California-San Diego (1996, Organic Chemistry). She was a CNRS Postdoctoral Fellow with the late Prof. Olivier Kahn at the University of Bordeaux, France (spin-based materials), and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow (Biomaterials, Prof. Thomas Meade/Prof. Harry Gray) at Caltech. She began her independent career in 2000 as an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington-Seattle in the study of multifunctional magnetic materials for spintronics and biosensing. In 2005, she was recruited as a Canada Research Chair Tier II in Multifunctional Materials Chemistry at the University of Victoria where she developed optically switchable spin-based qubits for quantum science. In 2012, she was a Visiting Scholar at Humbolt University (Physics), Berlin, Germany, and University of Rennes (Chemistry), France. In 2020, she joined the University of Nevada-Reno as Associate Professor of Chemistry. Her primary expertise is at the interface of organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, spin-based materials and photochemistry/electron transfer theory which allows her to be well-situated to address current challenges in molecular quantum information science: the design of molecular qubits with long decoherence times, multiqubit arrays, and qubits/qudits that can respond to external stimuli for quantum computing and sensing. Prof. Frank currently serves on two funded DOE EFRC advisory boards in quantum science, the ACS-PRF Advisory Board, and has served on numerous NSF funding panels in quantum relevant areas.

Keith Lawler

My primary research interest lies in studying systems where strong electron correlation effects are the source of exotic bonding or unique properties, or where intricate changes in the bonding motif drive an observed phase change. This involves studying a system’s electronic structure; its properties, both structural and spectroscopic; and its response to external stimuli such as pressure and temperature. Understanding these electron driven properties and responses is fascinating from a scientific point of view, and it will be the key to unlocking the next generation of functional materials.