Assistant Professor of Chemistry, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Jillian is originally from Summit, NJ. She received her S.B. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, where she carried out undergraduate research with Prof. Daniel G. Nocera. From MIT, she headed to the west coast to pursue her PhD as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. In the lab of Prof. Harry B. Gray, she studied the mechanism of cobaloxime-catalyzed hydrogen evolution utilizing transient absorption spectroscopy and electrochemistry. While at Caltech, she became active in a number science outreach programs on both the local and national levels. After completing graduate school, she headed north to the University of Washington to study the magneto-optical properties of diluted magnetic semiconductor nanocrystals with Professor Daniel R. Gamelin as an NSF American Competitiveness in Chemistry postdoctoral fellow. In July 2012, she moved to Chapel Hill, NC to start her independent career as an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina. Her research interests span molecular and materials chemistry, with a focus on utilizing inorganic spectroscopy to address challenges associated with developing efficient solar energy conversion processes. She teaches both general chemistry and graduate level inorganic chemistry. When she’s not in lab, Jillian loves running, yoga, hiking and cooking.