Stefan Franzen

University of North Carolina State University, Department of Chemistry

Stefan Franzen has been a professor of Chemistry at North Carolina State University since 1997. He studied music and languages in a Music High School in Stockholm, Sweden and graduated in 1976. He attended UC Berkeley and majored in Chemistry graduating in 1982. He served for three years in the US Peace Corps in Kenya. He studied photosynthetic electron transfer reactions as a graduate student in Dr. Steven Boxer’s research group at Stanford University and earned a PhD in Physical Chemistry in 1992. He received a European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) fellowship for study at the Ecole, Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. There he conducted ultrafast resonance Raman studies of hemoglobin initiated by photolysis of carbon monoxide. This research demonstrated the ultrarapid iron motion out of the plane of the heme. In 1994 he received a Director’s Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He worked with Woody Woodruff and Brian Dyer on heme protein dynamics extensively using resonance Raman spectroscopy and ultrafast spectroscopy. At NC State University, his research focused on the structure and function of the multifunctional heme protein, dehaloperoxidase, as well as infrared plasmonic materials and fundamental spectroscopic experiments to understand surface plasmon resonance. He developed two long-term collaborations, one at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China starting in 2004 and the other at Adam Mickiewicz 

Yuan Gao

North Carolina State University, Department of Chemistry

Yuan Gao is a research assistant at North Carolina State University, her research is focused on surface-enhanced Raman scattering and surface-enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy. She received her BS in chemistry from Zhejiang University, China in 2017, and became a research assistant at Zhejiang University from 2016 to 2018 in Dr. Hong Xin’s lab. She will be receiving her PhD in chemistry at North Carolina State University in 2023, under the guidance of Dr. Stefan Franzen. Yuan’s research at Zhejiang University was mechanistic studies of transition metal catalyzed organic reactions with DFT calculations and molecular dynamics. Based on the curiosity of the interaction between the metal and the molecule, her PhD study is developing accurate and non-expensive classical models for surface-enhanced spectroscopy. The Classical Correlation Model, by introducing harmonic terms as the electron-phonon coupling and rotational-vibrational coupling, can reproduce the Kramers Heisenberg Dirac formula, as well as the fine structure of the rovibrational spectroscopy. Based on this model, the Raman excitation profile, Raman spectroscopies, and the enhancement factor for SEIRA can be predicted accurately. She dedicates to improve the understanding of the interaction of the metal and the molecule and therefore to facilitate and expand the scope of applications of the surface-enhanced spectroscopy.