Profile

Henry La Pierre

Assistant Professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemisty and the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Program

Education:

A.B., 2006 Harvard University, Ph.D., 2011, University of California, Berkeley, Postdoctoral Scholar FAU-Erlangen 2011-2014, Director's Postdoctoral Fellow Los Alamos National Laboratory 2014-2016

Awards:

2018 ORAU: Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award

2018 – 2022 Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award

2018 – 2020 Blanchard Assistant Professorship – Georgia Institute of Technology

2014 – 2016 Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship – Los Alamos National Laboratory – Los Alamos, NM

2006 – 2011 National Science Foundation (NSF) Pre-Doctoral Fellowship

2005 Herchel Smith Harvard Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship – Kyoto University

Research Interests:

The principle goal of the La Pierre group’s synthetic, physical, and spectroscopic studies is to disentangle the complex electronic structure of f-block materials. Definitive spectroscopic and thermodynamic signatures of electronic structure phenomena unique to lanthanide, actinide, and transuranic materials are lacking. In particular, the process of establishing clear correspondence between spectroscopic signature, electronic structure, and physical properties is complicated by competition between multiple electronic phenomena on similar energy scales. Three problems of electron delocalization in f-block materials are driving our current studies including magnetic super-exchange (i.e. exchange coupled systems), multi-configurational electronic structures, and mixed valence metal ions (i.e. mixed f/d occupancy).

Please see the La Pierre Group Website (listed on the right) for further details on current projects and publications.