Jacob Dean

Associate Professor, Chemistry Southern Utah University

  • Cedar City UT

Expertise in physical chemistry, specifically molecular spectroscopy.

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Biography

Jacob Dean's expertise is in physical chemistry, specifically molecular spectroscopy. His research focuses on using light to better understand molecular and electronic structure, and also to investigate light-induced photoreactivity and function.

One direction of Dean's research group is exploring molecular design principles found in natural light-harvesting molecules/proteins within biological contexts such as photosynthesis and photoreception. Nature has spent a significant amount of "optimization" time in developing molecules and molecular aggregates which collectively perform a particular function at oftentimes impressively high efficiency. Spectroscopy can be used to understand the key interactions or particular molecular frameworks which give way to that function. These studies have applications in artificial light-harvesting and photoswitching.

Another research direction in Dean's group is laser spectroscopy of cold, isolated molecules in the gas phase at near 2 K temperatures to precisely measure the structure, electronic transitions, and nuclear motion activated by UV light of a molecule of interest. This lab utilizes a mass spectrometer coupled to a supersonic expansion to enable both UV-vis and IR spectroscopy of cold samples while simultaneously measuring the masses of any fragments or dissociation products resulting from excitation.

Media

Industry Expertise

Writing and Editing
Education/Learning
Chemicals
Research

Areas of Expertise

Laser Spectroscopy
Molecular Design Principles
Physical Chemistry
Molecular Spectroscopy
Spectroscopy

Education

Texas A&M University

B.S.

2009

Purdue University

Ph.D.

2014

Accomplishments

CAREER Award

2023-2028

National Science Foundation

Postdoctoral Research Scholar

2015-2017

Princeton University

Postdoctoral Research Scholar

2014-2015

University of Toronto

Media Appearances

Research projects and grant funding at SUU

KUTV  online

2023-10-17

Students can get a hands on experience when it comes to science programs at SUU. Dr. Jacob Dean discussed how research project and grant funding has helped students get a better experience and learn with hands on lessons.

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SUU Chemist Dr. Jacob Dean Awarded Prestigious NSF CAREER Grant

SUU News  online

2023-09-18

Associate Professor of Chemistry at Southern Utah University, Dr. Jacob Dean, has been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Program (CAREER) grant. This grant supports early-career faculty with the potential to become academic role models in research and education. Dr. Dean secured the top honor of $500,000 over five years to support his research in enhancing light harvesting efficiency in organic materials.

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Articles

Intramolecular Charge Transfer and Ultrafast Nonradiative Decay in DNA-Tethered Asymmetric Nitro- and Dimethylamino-Substituted Squaraines

The Journal of Physical Chemistry A

2023

Molecular (dye) aggregates are a materials platform of interest in light harvesting, organic optoelectronics, and nanoscale computing, including quantum information science (QIS). Strong excitonic interactions between dyes are key to their use in QIS; critically, properties of the individual dyes govern the extent of these interactions.

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Characterizing Mode Anharmonicity and Huang–Rhys Factors Using Models of Femtosecond Coherence Spectra

The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters

2022

Femtosecond laser pulses readily produce coherent quantum beats in transient–absorption spectra. These oscillatory signals often arise from molecular vibrations and therefore may contain information about the excited-state potential energy surface near the Franck–Condon region.

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Striking the right balance of intermolecular coupling for high-efficiency singlet fission

Chemical Science

2018

Singlet fission is a process that splits collective excitations, or excitons, into two with unity efficiency. This exciton splitting process, unique to molecular photophysics, has the potential to considerably improve the efficiency of optoelectronic devices through more efficient light harvesting.

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