Professor Joseph (Joe) Duchene

Joe DuChene was a postdoctoral scholar in the Atwater group from 2016 to 2019. Working with the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Caltech, he conducted fundamental studies on the energy distributions and ultrafast dynamics of plasmonic hot carriers in metal nanostructures and pioneered new plasmonic devices for enhancing the selectivity of photoelectrochemical CO2 reduction. He was also involved in the development of two-dimensional semiconductors for electrocatalysis and the design of nanoporous metal films for electrochemical CO2 reduction. Joe obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry in 2015 at the University of Florida with Professor David Wei, where his dissertation involved the development of plasmonic photoelectrochemical cells for solar-to-fuel energy conversion. He is currently Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, where his group designs and creates nanostructured catalysts capable of sustainably synthesizing fuels and chemicals from CO2, sunlight, and water.