Cathy Murphy, the Larry R. Faulkner Endowed Chair in Chemistry and the interim director of the Beckman Institute, will present "A golden time for nanotechnology" at the Beckman Institute Director's Seminar at noon on Thursday, Sept. 7 in 1005 Beckman. Lunch will be provided for attendees who register.
Registration is required to attend.
"A golden time for nanotechnology
Gold nanocrystals of controlled size and shape have tunable optical properties that enable new science. Upon illumination with resonant light, these gold nanocrystals can not only scatter light but also generate plasmons (coherent oscillations of conduction band electrons). These plasmons, in turn, can produce local electric fields and heat. All these modalities mean that gold nanocrystals can serve as excellent contrast and imaging agents in aqueous matrices. In this talk, Murphy will describe the synthesis and shape control of these nanocrystals; absolute measurements of their absorption and scattering, and their ability to deliver photoelectrons; details of their surface chemistry; their ability to function as molecular sensors and light-triggered delivery agents; and how these nanocrystals impact biological systems at the protein, cell, and ecosystem levels.
Cathy Murphy is the Larry R. Faulkner Endowed Chair in Chemistry and the interim director of the Beckman Institute. She earned B.S. degrees in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1986 (and performed undergraduate research with Tom Rauchfuss in organometallic chemistry) and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1990 (on the topic of semiconductor photoluminescence, with Art Ellis). From 1990-1993, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology (working on electron transfer through DNA, with Jackie Barton). She started her independent career at the University of South Carolina and was the first woman hired on the tenure track in chemistry and biochemistry there in 1993. After rising through the ranks, she was recruited back to UIUC in 2009.
Murphy’s honors include the 2020 ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry, the 2019 Remsen Award, the 2019 Linus Pauling Medal, the 2019 MRS Medal, and many others. In 2015, she was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and in 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
