Event interval: Single day event
Campus location: Bagley Hall (BAG)
Campus room: BAG 131
Accessibility Contact: chem59x@uw.edu
Event Types: Lectures/Seminars,Special Events
Event sponsors: This award was established in 2003 by Professor Emeritus B. Seymour Rabinovitch to honor the outstanding accomplishments made by a member of the Chemistry faculty in any area of professional responsibility. It is the donor’s further intent that this award will bring the recipient’s work to the attention of the greater University community while fostering fellowship among faculty and graduate students.
Link: https://chem.washington.edu/people/daniel-r-gamelin

The Amazing Lives of Defects in Crystals

Professor Daniel Gamelin — Department of Chemistry, University of Washington
Recipient of the Paul Hopkins Faculty Award

Real crystals are never perfect: they always contain defects. Even at low concentrations, these defects can completely transform the physical properties of the crystals in fascinating and technologically useful ways. For example, modern microelectronics rely on point defects (“dopants”) to introduce and control the flow of electrical charges in crystalline semiconductors. Similarly, many lighting and display technologies use defects to convert input energy into useful emitted light. Looking ahead, we can anticipate that future technologies will emerge from our ability to harness defects in new materials, including at the nanoscale. In the spirit of the Hopkins Award, this talk will explore a few examples from history and from our group’s research where defects in inorganic materials have been used to express interesting and (sometimes) impactful physical properties, illustrating the role of basic science in driving the development of next-generation technologies. 

Prof. Gamelin was selected for this award for his outstanding contributions to our research, education, and service missions. The committee recognizes Daniel’s impactful research contributions in the inorganic and physical chemistry of materials. Daniel has been a been a wonderful adviser to more than fifty graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who have gone on to positions in academia, industry, and national laboratories. The committee also highly valued and appreciated Daniel’s professional activities on departmental committees, as well as at the Washington State Academy of Sciences, ACS Nanoscience Sub-Division of Inorganic Chemistry, ACS symposia, Gordon Research Conferences, and others.

Daniel R. Gamelin received his B.A. in chemistry from Reed College, spent a year as a visiting scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute für Strahlenchemie, and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University working with Edward I. Solomon in the fields of inorganic and bioinorganic spectroscopies. Following a postdoctoral appointment working with Hans U. Güdel (University of Bern) studying luminescent inorganic materials, he joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Washington where he presently holds the Nicole A. Boand Endowed Chair in Chemistry and serves as inaugural Director of the UW Molecular Engineering Materials Center (NSF MRSEC). His research involves the development of new inorganic materials with unusual electronic structures that give rise to desirable photophysical, photochemical, magnetic, or magneto-optical properties. Prof. Gamelin has received numerous honors for his work including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the ACS Inorganic Lectureship Award, the Dalton Transactions Americas Lectureship Award, the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, and the Debye Chair Professorship at Utrecht University. He has been a visiting professor at Utrecht University, University of Melbourne, University of Konstanz, EPFL, and Universidad de Cantabria. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Senior Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Scialog Fellow of Research Corporation, and a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences. He co-founded the startup BlueDot Photonics based on his laboratory’s research. He was an Associate Editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Communications for 12 years, stepping down in 2022.