News

4/27/2023: Congratulations to Sander Cohen-Janes and Hanwen Liu for giving their undergraduate thesis presentations! 

3/28/2023: Rebecca gave a presentation titled "Semiempirical Modeling of Plasmon-Enhanced Electron Transfer Processes" at the National ACS Meeting.

11/14/2022: Rebecca gave a presentation at Simmons University titled "Quantum Mechanical Modeling of Plasmon-Like Excited States".

10/20/2022: Rebecca gave a presentation titled "Quantum Mechanical Modeling of Atomically Precise Metal Nanoclusters" at the Atomically Precise Nanochemistry Gordon Research Conference.

10/15/2022: Jicun Li has joined the Gieseking group as a postdoc.

10/5/2022: Rebecca gave a presentation at St. Joseph's University titled "Quantum Mechanical Modeling of Plasmon-Like Excited States".

8/25/2022: Rebecca gave two presentations at the National ACS meeting: one titled "Developing Semiempirical Models for Noble Metal Nanoclusters", and one titled "Semiempirical Modeling of Plasmon-Enhanced Electron Transfer Processes".

8/11/2022: Four undergraduates in the Gieseking group presented posters at Brandeis's SciFest. Hanwen presented a poster titled "Photoinduced Charge Transfer in Complexes of Silver Nanoclusters with Molecules", Carina presented a poster titled "Ab Initio Reference Data for Parameterization of Semiempirical Method PM7 for Gold Nanoclusters", Saki presented a poster titled "Benchmarking Binding Energies and Geometries of Gold Nanoclusters Using Density Functional Theory", and Vivian presented a poster titled "Developing Ground and Excited State Reference Data for Thiol-Protected Silver Nanoclusters".

7/21/2022: Rebecca gave a presentation titled "“Quantum Mechanical Modeling of Plasmon-Like Excited States” at the Light-matter interaction and ultrafast nonequilibrium dynamics in plasmonic materials Centre Européen de Atomique et Moléculaire (CECAM) workshop in Warwick, United Kingdom.

7/14/2022: The Gieseking group's paper "Quantum Mechanical Effects in High-Resolution Tip-Enhanced Raman Imaging" has been published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, as part of the Nanophotonics for Chemical Imaging and Spectroscopy virtual special issue.

6/16/2022: The Gieseking group was awarded a research allocation on the XSEDE computer cluster, titled "Parametrizing semiempirical quantum mechanical models for noble metal nanoclusters".

6/13/2022: Rebecca gave a presentation titled "Quantum Mechanical Modeling of Plasmon-Like Excited States" at the Noble Metal Nanoparticles Gordon Research Conference.

6/1/2022: Qiwei Sun gave a presentation entitled "Parametrization of Semiempirical Method PM7 for Bare Silver Clusters" at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

6/1/2022: Rebecca co-chaired a COMP symposium titled "Theoretical modeling of energy conversion and light-matter interactions" at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

5/20/2022: Congratulations to Yoyo Wu for graduating from Brandeis with a B.S. in Chemistry!

3/1/2022: Anant Bhasin has joined the Gieseking group as a first-year PhD student.

1/30/2022: Two undergraduates, Carina Luo and Hanwen Liu, have joined the Gieseking group.

1/21/2022: Alva's paper "Evolution of plasmon-like excited states in silver nanowires and nanorods" was accepted into the Journal of Chemical Physics.

11/8/2021: Rebecca participated as a Scialog Fellow in the second Scialog on Negative Emissions Science, participating in conversations about novel research directions to remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

10/12/2021: Rebecca guest edited a themed collection of articles on solar energy conversion for Nanoscale Horizons and Materials Horizons, jointly with Alexandra Ramadan and Jungki Ryu. 

9/30/2021: The Gieseking group's review article "Plasmons: untangling the classical, experimental, and quantum mechanical definitions" has been published in Materials Horizons.

8/17/2021: Two undergraduates, Vivian Worthington and Saki Doi, have joined the Gieseking group.

8/15/2021: Congratulations to Yavuz Ceylan, who is starting a job as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts!

7/28/2021: The Gieseking group's paper "Hydride- and Halide-Substituted Au9(PH3)83+ Nanoclusters: Similar Absorption Spectra Disguise Distinct Geometries and Electronic Structures" has been published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

7/8/2021: The Brandeis Science Blog posted about the Gieseking group's NSF CAREER award.

5/24/2021: Congratulations to three students who have graduated from the Gieseking group! Pamela Vargas completed a B.S. in Chemistry, Steven Luo completed a B.A./M.A. in Chemistry and a B.S. in Applied Math, and Bernard Brown completed an M.A. in Chemistry.

 5/6/2021: Congratulations to Steven Luo for an excellent presentation to the chemistry department on his BA/MA thesis! His thesis is titled "Factors that Affect Cis-trans Energy Difference of Substituted Azobenzenes". 

4/1/2021: The Gieseking group has been awarded an NSF CAREER grant titled "Developing Low-Cost Computational Models for the Photoexcited Dynamics of Noble Metal Nanoclusters" 

3/29/2021: Congratulations to Sander Cohen-Janes and Yoyo Wu, who both received summer research fellowships from Brandeis! Sander received the Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, and Yoyo received the Jordan-Dreyer Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. 

2/1/2021: The Gieseking group has published a pre-print, "Hydride- and Halide-Substituted Au9(PH3)83+ Nanoclusters: Similar Absorption Spectra Disguise Distinct Geometries and Electronic Structures", on ChemRxiv.

1/11/2021: Yoyo Wu has joined the Gieseking group as an undergraduate researcher. Yoyo is currently a sophomore intending to major in chemistry and minor in math. 

11/24/2020: The Gieseking group has been awarded a grant from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, entitled "Photocatalyzed Petroleum Desulfurization by Plasmonic Metal Clusters". 

11/23/2020: The Gieseking group has published a paper, "A New Release of MOPAC Incorporating the INDO/S Semiempirical Model with CI Excited States" in the Journal of Computational Chemistry. An earlier version of this manuscript was released as a pre-print on ChemRxiv over the summer.

11/20/2020: Rebecca recently participated as a Scialog Fellow in the inaugural Scialog on Negative Emissions Science, participating in conversations about novel research directions to remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

7/14/2020: The Gieseking group's code implementing the INDO/S Hamiltonian is available in the latest release of MOPAC, available freely for academic use. The INDO/S Hamiltonian is parametrized specifically for excited-state properties, and we have implemented COSMO implicit solvent corrections for configuration interaction (CI) excited states. A pre-print describing the methods in this code and our implementation is available from ChemRxiv.

5/1/2020: Congratulations to Steven and Pam, who both received summer research fellowships! Pam received the Tema Nemtzow ’79 and Professor Kraig Steffen Student Research Endowment Fellowship, and Steven received the Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. 

2/15/2020: Rebecca recently presented a poster, "Analytical Approaches to Identify Plasmon-Like Excited States in Ligand-Protected Noble Metal Nanoclusters," at the Gordon Research Conference on Atomically Precise Nanochemistry in Galveston, Texas.

1/27/2020: Sander Cohen-Janes has joined the Gieseking group as an undergraduate researcher. Sander is currently a freshman intending to major in chemistry. 

1/16/2020: The Gieseking group has published a paper, "Analytical Approaches to Identify Plasmon-Like Excited States in Bare and Ligand-Protected Metal Nanoclusters," in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

12/9/2019: The Gieseking group has published a paper, "Molecular engineering of organic semiconductors enables noble metal-comparable SERS enhancement and sensitivity," in Nature Communications, in collaboration with Gokhan Demeriel, George Schatz, Antonio Facchetti, and Hakan Usta.

8/29/2019: Rebecca presented a talk entitled "Semiempirical modeling of SERS and TERS enhancement mechanisms" at the ACS National Meeting. This talk was part of the Chemistry in Real Space and Time symposium. 

8/5/2019: Three students in the Gieseking group will be among the 120 undergraduates presenting posters at Brandeis's SciFest on Thursday, August 8. The Gieseking group posters are:

8/5/2019: Rebecca Gieseking recently presented at the Telluride workshop "Non-equilibrium Phenomena, Nonadiabatic Dynamics and Spectroscopy." Her talk was titled "Semiempirical Modeling of Plasmonic Ag Nanoclusters and Surface-Enhanced Spectroscopy."

7/19/2019: The Gieseking group has published a paper, "Third-Order Nonlinear Optical Properties of Ag Nanoclusters: Connecting Molecule-Like and Nanoparticle-Like Behavior," in Chemistry of Materials as part of the Jean-Luc Bredas Festschrift.

6/6/2019: Yavuz Ceylan has joined the Gieseking group as a postdoc. Yavuz recently completed his Ph.D. in Thomas Cundari's group at the University of North Texas, studying computational inorganic chemistry. 

5/28/2019: Qiwei Sun has joined the Gieseking group as a Ph.D student. Qiwei majored in biochemistry at Temple University and recently completed an M.A. in chemistry at Brandeis. 

4/19/2019: Congratulations to Bernard Brown, who presented his BS thesis! His thesis is titled "Computational Modeling of Tip-Enhancement Raman Scattering (TERS) Imaging of CO on a Cu Substrate." Bernard will be continuing in the Gieseking group as a Ph.D. student. 

3/25/2019: Congratulations to Elyse Hahn, who has received the Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship! This award provides funding for Elyse's summer research in the Gieseking group. 

1/15/2019: Steven Luo and Pamela Vargas have joined the Gieseking group as undergraduate research students. Steven is a sophomore double-majoring in Chemistry and Applied Math, and Pamela is a sophomore majoring in Chemistry. 

9/21/2018: Bernard Brown has joined the Gieseking group as an undergraduate research student. Bernard is a senior chemistry major at Brandeis University. 

9/4/2018: Elyse Hahn has joined the Gieseking group as an undergraduate research student. Elyse is a junior chemistry major at Brandeis University. 

8/24/2018: Rebecca has published a paper, "Benchmarking Semiempirical Methods To Compute Electrochemical Formal Potentials", in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A. This paper shows that the semiempirical Hamiltonians PM6 and PM7 can predict experimental reduction potentials with little loss of accuracy relative to DFT. We also demonstrate that we can compute reduction potentials in the presence of an electrode via the energies of charge-transfer triplet states, enabling us to examine the effects of interfacial interactions on molecular reduction potentials.

7/25/2018: Alva Dillon has joined the Gieseking group as a graduate student. Alva is coming from Jackson State University, where he earned an M.S. in Chemistry. 

7/1/2018: Prof. Rebecca L. M. Gieseking has started as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Brandeis University.