17th Annual Riley Schaeffer Endowed Lectureship

When: Fri, Nov 06 2026 4:00pm - Fri, Nov 06 2026 5:00pm 

Where: Clark Hall 101

The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology is thrilled to welcome Dr. Michael Therien from Duke University as our honored speaker for the 17th Annual Riley Schaeffer Endowed Lectureship. His lecture is titled "Supermolecular Chemistry".

This is the premier lecture held by the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and this year held in partnership with Research and Discovery Week, as one of the keynote lectures. This lectureship was established in 2008 in honor of Professor Riley Schaeffer through the contributions from UNM faculty, past students of Professor Shaeffer at Indiana University and UNM, friends, and external colleagues.

Supermolecular Chemistry

Modulation of the nature and dynamics of fundamental excitations in highly conjugated structures is central to the design of the new materials for specialized emission, imaging, frequency doubling, photon upconversion, solar energy conversion, charge and spin transport, and quantum information science. Supermolecular chromophores are strongly coupled chromophore ensembles that manifest such profound electronic and excitonic interactions between the constituent absorptive oscillators that entirely unique photophysical entities are defined. This presentation will describe how supermolecular chemistry design concepts enable novel compositions that provide exquisite control over the lifetimes, dynamics, delocalization, dephasing, and migration of excitons, polarons, and spins. Exemplary supermolecules that define unique long-wavelength emissive materials, imaging agents, chromophores for nonlinear optical applications, and spin valves will be illustrated.

About the Speaker

Michael J. Therien is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor at Duke University. His laboratory designs, characterizes, and mechanistically interrogates supermolecular structures, bioinspired assemblies, de novo proteins, and nanoscale materials that possess exceptional optical, electronic, and excited-state dynamical properties. His laboratory pioneered new approaches to engineer electro-optic function important for light harvesting, charge migration, long-wavelength emission, imaging, frequency doubling, and photon upconversion. Other accomplishments include defining molecular wires that enable expansive charge delocalization; developing carbon nanotube superstructures that facilitate energy conversion; and illuminating biologically important mechanistic insights critical for generating high-energy photoproducts.

Prof. Therien received his undergraduate education at UCLA and St. Andrews University. He earned his doctoral degree at UCSD under the research direction of William Trogler. Following a postdoctoral fellowship with Harry Gray at Caltech, he took a faculty appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the Alan G. MacDiarmid Professor. In 2008, his laboratory moved to Duke University. Early honors include Dreyfus and Sloan Foundation Fellowships, and young investigator awards from the Beckman Foundation, the Searle Scholars Program, the Society of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines, and the NSF. He has been recognized with the ACS Philadelphia Section Award and awarded the Francqui Chair in the Exact Sciences (Belgium). He is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2021) and has been recognized with R. B. Woodward Award in Porphyrin Chemistry (2022), the American Chemical Society Florida Section Award (2023), a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Fellowship (2024), and the Inter-American Photochemical Society Award in Photochemistry (2024).

Link: Read more about the Riley Schaeffer Endowed Lectureship