Steven A. Lopez, Ph.D.
Steven is the principal investigator of the Lopez group and director of graduate studies. He is interested in understanding the mechanism of organic photochemical reactions and developing big-data techniques to accelerate photodynamics simulations and identify new classes of chromophores. Steven serves as the Chairman of the Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering. He earned a BS in Chemistry from NYU, PhD in Chemistry from UCLA, and was a DOE Postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.
Associate Professor
Leticia Adao Gomes
Leticia is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Suffolk University in 2021. Her research focuses on using high-throughput virtual screening calculations to identify novel organic photoredox catalysts. Additionally, she is investigating the mechanistic origin of the stereoselectivity in photodenitrogenation reactions using CASSCF and NAMD.
5th year graduate student
Christian Salguero
Christian is a third-year PhD student from Los Angeles, California. He graduated from Connecticut College in 2021 where he majored in Chemistry with minors in math and computer science. Christian is now using various quantum chemical methods, such as Density Functional Theory and complete active space, and machine learning methods, such PyRAI2MD, to understand photochemical mechanisms of light-promoted gas-evolving reactions.
4th year graduate student
Sean Larmore
Sean Larmore is a first-year graduate PhD student from Flemington, NJ. He graduated from New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2023 with a major in chemistry and a minor in applied mathematics. Sean is still learning a lot about the lab and the various methods employed, but he is extremely interested in understanding the mechanisms of photo-activated chemical reactions as well as the potential role that solvation plays in these reactions. Sean is currently working on photocatalyzed ammonia cleavage reaction!
3rd year graduate student
Nimasha Thejani
Nimasha Thejani (TJ) is originally from Sri Lanka and a graduate of the University of Colombo, where she completed her B.Sc. (Hons) in Computational Chemistry in 2023. She is passionate about understanding the excited-state dynamics of photoactivated molecules and exploring the theoretical foundations of these reactions through both chemistry and mathematics. TJ is currently working on the photochemical denitrogenation of a novel cyclobutane diazirine compound called PALBOX, which has demonstrated groundbreaking potential in photoaffinity labeling based on recent experimental findings.
2nd year graduate student
Andres Lopez
Andrés C. López is a second-year graduate student from Colombia. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of organic photochemical reactions and photocatalysis, as well as developing artificial intelligence techniques to accelerate photodynamic simulations and identify new classes of chromophores. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Chemistry at the Universidad Industrial de Santander.
2nd year graduate student
Bella Albano
Bella is from Rochester, New York and is a research assistant in the Lopez Lab. She recently graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in health science, pursuing a career in medicine. Bella is using multireference quantum calculations to uncover the mechanisms of misunderstood photochemical reactions.
Postbac researcher