Principal Investigator:
Jacob H. Olshansky

Prof. Olshansky (he/him/his) grew up in Urbana, Illinois, where he got his start in scientific research by spending summers in the research corn fields of the University of Illinois. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Physics from Haverford College (’12) where he worked in Alex Norquist’s solid state chemistry group, studying the hydrothermal syntheses of amine-templated metal oxides. He then moved to California to pursue his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at UC Berkeley. His dissertation research aimed to understand the mechanism of charge transfer from photoexcited quantum dots and was advised by Paul Alivisatos. He completed his postdoctoral studies at Northwestern University under the guidance of Michael Wasielewski. At Northwestern, he studied spin dynamics of photogenerated charges in synthetic DNA. He joined the Amherst College community in the summer of 2020.

Current members

Dr. Eunbyeol Gi

Postdoctoral researcher

(she/her/hers)

From: Gwangju, South Korea

Fun fact: I enjoy classical music! Sometimes I travel to different cities only to attend great classical concerts.

Favorite wavelength of light: 500 nm

Maggie Yang ’25

(she/her/hers)

From: Rome, NY and Bridgeport, PA

Fun fact: I love K-Pop, so much so that I started K:NETICS Dance Crew here at Amherst.

Favorite wavelength of light: 580 nm

Yurii Sulima ’26

(he/him/his)

From: Poltava, Ukraine

Fun fact: Although I am a sophomore, I have already studied in three universities / colleges (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Riga Technical University, Amherst College). Also, I had a summer job as a graphical design engineer in Latvia working mostly on creating mounting and component change instructions.

Favorite wavelength of light: 460 nm

Kaela Liu ’26

(she/her/hers)

From: San Diego, CA

Fun fact: I love watching indie movies and enjoy boba tea.

Favorite wavelength of light: 450 nm

Luana Espinoza ’26

(she/her/hers)

From: Lima, Peru; Stockholm, Sweden; Newton, MA

Fun fact: I’ve tried McDonald’s in 9 different countries! I also like baking, especially Peruvian desserts.

Favorite wavelength of light: 410 nm

Lautaro Ferreira ’28

(he/him)

From: Salto, Uruguay

Fun fact: I love desserts and sweet things! I like every single one of Val’s cakes. Also, coming to Amherst was my first time living abroad.

Favorite wavelength of light: 700 nm

Dian Kun Yin ’28

(she/her/hers)

From: Auckland, New Zealand

Fun fact: My favourite food is fruit, so much so that I have 6 fruit trees at home. I used to eat so much fruit that my doctor told me to cut back on it!

Favorite wavelength of light: 460 nm

Anika Gupta ’28

(she/her/hers)

From: New Jersey

Fun fact: I enjoy watching the Great British Baking Show and attempting to recreate their dishes.

Favorite wavelength of light: 740 nm

The away team (Summer 2025)

Fiona Cho ’27

(she/her/hers)

From: Palos Verdes, CA

Fun fact: I love walking, and randomly walked to all of the elementary schools in my district in one week in July 2022. It was 90 miles and over 200k steps. Fittingly, I don’t have my driver’s license.

Favorite wavelength of light: 400 nm

Richard Lin ’27

(he/him/his)

From: San Jose, CA

Fun fact: I like trivia, but I know very little about pop music or sports. Also, if I had to pick, my favorite book would be Catch-22.

Favorite wavelength of light: 530 nm

 

Former members

Thesis Students

Nejc Nagelj ’21, Chemistry Ph.D. program at Harvard

Max Hoffman ’22, Chemistry Ph.D. program at the University of Washington

Troy Colleran ’22, Materials Science Ph.D. program at University of Colorado, Boulder

Shoshanna Peifer ’23, Chemistry Ph.D. program at Northwestern University

Karime Hernandez-Perez ’24, Chemistry Ph.D. program at Stanford University

Autumn Lee ’23, Materials Science Ph.D. program at Stanford University

Frida Hernandez ’24, Chemistry Ph.D. program at University of Pennsylvania, NSF GRFP

Amisha Jain ’25, Chemistry Ph.D. program at Northwestern University

Britney Jiang ’25, research technician at Columbia University

Maggie Yang ’25

Kyle Hur ’25

Other Students

Hyery Yoo ’22 (MIT Ph.D.)

Hasham Warrich ’23

Sonja Lazovic ’22 (Columbia Medical School)

Daniya Ali ’25

Jovan Markovic ’25 (MIT)

Hasun Noh ’25

Shani Getz ’26

Caleb Savoie ’26

Stella Yuan ’26

Shirley Fu ’26