| Our group is interested in the physical and photophysical properties of transition metal complexes. Our approach relies on a confluence of synthetic chemistry, a cornucopia of physical techniques ranging from magnetism to femtosecond time-resolved spectroscopy, and high-level theory. The simultaneous examination of chemical problems on all three of these fronts places us in a unique position to explore the physical chemistry of inorganic compounds. | ||
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NEWS
| November 3rd, 2025 | ||
| We
are thrilled to announce that Professor Jim McCusker
was honored with
the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Lectureship at the
University of Basel!
This prestigious lectureship, endowed by the Camille
& Henry
Dreyfus Foundation, brings distinguished U.S.-based
chemists to Basel
each year to deliver a series of talks and engage
with students and
faculty. This recognition highlights Jim's leadership in photochemistry, particularly his work on light-driven chemistry in the first transition series. For more information about this lectureship, click here! |
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| October 21st, 2025 | ||
| Congratulations to Dr. Atanu Ghosh on successfully completing his Ph.D. and defending his dissertation! He will be joining Professor Danna Freedman's group at MIT as a Postdoctoral Associate! We wish him all the best in his future scientific endeavors!! | ||
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| October 16th, 2025 | ||
| From
countless experiments that didn’t go as planned to a
breakthrough story
on spin-state changes and reorganization barriers...
our new JACS paper is
out! These insights shed new light on the role
of metal-centered states in photoredox catalysis. |
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| August 8th, 2025 | ||
| New Publication Alert in Chem Sci! Atanu Ghosh has shown the influence of ion-pairing on excited-state dynamics using NMR techniques like DOSY and ROE (in collaboration with MSU's NMR expert, Dr. Daniel Holmes) in conjunction with variable-solvent transientabsorption spectroscopy. Check it out here! | ||
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| July 22nd, 2025 | ||
| Congrats to Dr. Yi-Jyun Lien for successfully defending his Ph.D. disseration!!!! He is now heading to the University of Southern California for his post-doc to work under Prof. Mark Thompson. We're sad to see the Fe(II)-man go! | ||
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| June 30th, 2025 | ||
| Check out this recent achievement from the
McCusker Group! Atanu Ghosh was recently awarded an
ACS Young
Investigators Award!!! CONGRATULATIONS on
this incredible accomplishment! See his story here! |
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| June 25th, 2025 | ||
| Congratulations to Jim on being awarded the 2025 Dalton open
Prize: Mond-Nyholm Prize for Inorganic Chemistry!
Read about this amazing accomplishment at the
following websites: MSU NatSci Article & RSC Prize Winner Article 🎉 |
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| June 1st, 2025 | ||
| We are excited to welcome Madhurima Sarkar and
Josh Paul to the McCusker Group! Yeah, SCIENCE! |
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| May 25th, 2025 | ||
| CONGRATULATIONS to the McCusker Group's THREE new PhD Candidates: Avit, Saptarshi, and Abby! Excited to see everything you all accomplish! | ||
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| May 2nd, 2025 | ||
| Congrats
to Yi-Jyun Lien and Atanu Ghosh on getting hooded at
the 2025 MSU
Commencement Ceremony! We're looking forward to your
PhD Dissertation
Defenses! |
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| January 5th, 2025 | ||
| Check out our most recent publication in JACS in collaboration with Robert Ortiz from Professor David Herbert's group! Through the use of ligand design, a long-lived 3MC lowest energy excited state was confirmed in this Fe(II) complex. | ||
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| October 15th, 2024 | ||
| We are thrilled to have Björn Pfund, a Postdoctoral Researcher, as a new group member! Björn received his PhD from the University of Basel, Switzerland under the guidance of Professor Oliver Wenger. Welcome to the group! | ||
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September 12th, 2024 |
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| Congratulations to Dr. Hayden Beissel on successfully defending his PhD! Hayden is now working as a Post Doc with Professor Lisa Olshansky at UIUC! Good luck on all your endeavors! | ||
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| July 4th, 2024 | ||
| Check out our most recent publication in Nature Chemistry featuring work on the origin of Co(III) polypyridyl excited-state dynamics operating in the Marcus inverted region! | ||
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| July 1st, 2024 | ||
| Congratulations to Atanu Ghosh for receiving the College of Natural Science Oustanding Scholar Fellowship! This award will support his research activities in the group on exploring Colbat(III) photophysics. Read more about his research HERE! | ||
| May 1st, 2024 | ||
| The McCusker group welcomes another PhD candidate, Abdullah! Congratulations on passing your oral exam! | ||
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| March 25th, 2024 | ||
| Another CONGRATULATIONS to Jim on earning the 2024 Josef Michl ACS Photochemistry Award. Yi-Jyun, Micheal, Bekah, and Atanu joined in on the celebration and presented posters and talks at the 2024 ACS Spring Conference in New Orleans. Congrats to all of the group on their accomplishments! Group alumni (Professor Niels Damrauer and Professor Dani Arias-Rotondo) were also along for the celebration. | ||
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| January 10th, 2024 | ||
| The McCusker group would like to welcome four new first year graduate students: Abigail Gamble, Avit Patel, Saptarshi Biswas, and Shakil Ahmed! Excited to see what new chemistry you all will bring to the group. | ||
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| November 20th, 2023 | ||
| Congratulations to Dr. Jonathan Yarranton for successfully defending his disseration! He is now going on to continue his journey in photochemistry at Argonne National Lab as a Post-Doctoral Researcher! | ||
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| Novemer 11th, 2023 | ||
| Take a look at our recent publication in Chemical Science in collaboration with the Schlau-Cohen (MIT) and Jakubikova (NCSU) groups! This paper takes advantage of both ultrafast 2D electronic spectroscopy and computational efforts to discuss charge transfer dynamics in [Fe(bpy)3]2+. | ||
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| October 20th, 2023 | ||
| Last night, the MSU Chemistry Department celebrated all of our recent achievements including the 2024 Josef Michl ACS Photochemistry Award awarded to Jim! He was given a plaque designed by the group. | ||
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| October 12th, 2023 | ||
| Our new Science paper is OUT! Through
collaboration with Professor Sir David MacMillan's
group, our group
has shown that Co(III) polypyridyls can be utilized
as powerful
photocatalysts due to their photophysical behavior
in the Marcus inverted
region. By utilizing our fundamental knowledge of
Co(III) photophysics,
these chromophores can be used in a number of
different chemical
transformations. |
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 Click the image above to navigate to the publication! |
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| Check out the Science perspective article from Professor Oliver Wenger which discusses this work and the differing excited-state behavior of Fe(II) and Co(III) polypyridyl chromophores. | ||
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| September 13th, 2023 | ||
| Check out our most recent publication in JACS with Micheal Alowakennu and Atanu Ghosh! This work studies the fundamentals of the Co(III) ligand-field excited state for photoredox chemistry. | ||
 Click above to navigate to the publication! |
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| September 7th, 2023 | ||
| A huge CONGRATULATIONS to Professor James K. McCusker on receiving the 2024 Josef Michl ACS Award in Photochemistry! This award recognizes those with revolutionary accomplishments in fundamental photochemical research. This incredible accomplishment deserves a celebration! | ||
 Click the above image to see the 2024 award winners! |
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| September 1st, 2023 | ||
| We would like to welcome Robert Ortiz, from the Herbert Group at the University of Manitoba, who is joining us for 6 months to learn transient absorption techniques! Happy Sciencing! | ||
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June 14th, 2023 |
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| Atanu, Micheal, and Bekah traveled to Princeton University for the annual BioLEC Researcher's Retreat to discuss exciting chemistry in photoredox catalysis! They presented posters and discussed collaboration opportunities with researchers that are part of the BioLEC EFRC. | ||
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May 1st, 2023 |
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| Congratulations to Dr. Karl Nielsen for successfully defending his thesis! Time to add Ph.D. to your resume! | ||
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| January 15th, 2023 | ||
| We would like to welcome two NEW members to the
McCusker Group this year: Abdullah and Courtney!
Happy Sciencing! |
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| January 9th, 2023 | ||
| Professor Jim McCusker, Hayden Beissel, and Atanu Ghosh recently attended the 2023 Inter-American Photochemical Society Meeting! At this meeting, Prof. McCusker received his 2023 I-APS Award in Photochemistry (pictured top). Hayden (bottom left) and Atanu (bottom right) also presented posters, where Atanu won one of the Graduate Student Best Poster Awards. Congratulations to all of the accomplishments reconized at this 30th Winter I-APS Conference! | ||
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November 30th, 2022 |
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| Congratulations to Micheal for successfully
passing his 2nd year oral exam! Welcome
to the Ph.D. Candidate Club! |
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| July 7th, 2022 | ||
| Congratulation to Prof. Jim McCusker on receiving the 2023 Inter-American Photochemical Society Award in Photochemistry! Check out i-aps.org for more information on this award. | ||
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| June 25th, 2022 Check out our latest paper in JACS on the development of a Co(III) spectrochemical series to study the ligand field strength of commonly employed ligands to induce charge-transfer states in low-spin, d6 systems. To read more, click HERE!  |
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| June 6th, 2022 Check out our newest paper in Faraday Discussions on using vibronic coherence to identify reaction coordinates for ultrafast excited-states dynamics of transition metal chromophores!  |
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| May 6th, 2022 Congratulations to the 2022 chemistry graduates! Jonathan Yarranton walked at commencement today graduating with his Ph.D. in chemistry! Congratulations on all your hard work!  *Jonathan Yarranton, top row in the middle |
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| April 29th, 2022 Congratulations to Bekah for successfully passing her 2nd year oral exam! Enjoy your accomplishment! |
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| April 18th, 2022 Check out our newest paper in Nature Chemistry investigating the effect of ion-pairing on ground- and excited-state charge distribution in Iridium(III) polypyridyl complexes using using Time-Resolved dielectric loss spectroscopy!  |
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| April 12th, 2022 Congratulations to Atanu for successfully passing his 2nd Year Oral Examination! Time to relax and enjoy your accomplishment!...Then back to Science!  |
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| May 20th, 2021 Check out our new paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on using a modular approach of strong-field carbenes and phenanthroline to tune excited-state properties of Iron(II) polypyridyls! You can read the full article here!  |
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| May 1st, 2021 We'd like to welcome Michael Alowakennu as the newest member of the McCusker Group! Let's do some science!  |
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| March 3, 2021 Our new paper using optical and infrared spectroelectrochemistry to investigate ruthenium(II) cyano-substituted bipyridine complexes is out now in Inorganic Chemistry! Click here to read this new report!  |
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| December 15th, 2020 We'd like to officially welcome Bekah Bowers and Atanu Ghosh to the McCusker group! 
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| September 28th, 2020 Our report on using ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy to address questions in ligand-field theory was featured in a virtual issue of Inorganic Chemistry highlighting the impact of modern spectroscopy in inorganic chemistry! To read our original report click here!  |
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| September 11th, 2020 Our new communication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society showing electron transfer from the lowest-energy ligand-field state of [Fe(tren(py)3)]2+, a common iron(II) chormophore, is now online! In this paper, the observation of electron transfer from the ligand-field state shows that these types of complexes can engage in photoinduced redox reactions with organic substrates. You can read the new article here!  |
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| August 25th, 2020 A new News and Views article has been published in Nature Chemistry highlighting our recent paper using vibrational coherence and ligand design to control ultrafast dynamics in iron(II) polypyridyls to extend charge transfer lifetimes! You can read the new article here! |
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| July 8th, 2020 A highlight of our recent paper on using ligand design to control ultrafast dynamics in iron(II) polypyridyls was just published in Nature Reviews Chemistry! To read the original paper click here and to read the new highlight article click here. |
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| July 7th, 2020 A perspective article was published in Nature Reviews Chemistry today on Exploiting chemistry and molecular systems for quantum information science! The link for the article is below: Perspective Article |
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| June 23rd, 2020 Congratulations to our boss, Prof. James McCusker, on winning the Royal Society of Chemistry 2020 Chemical Dynamics Award! To read more about the award and his interview by RSC click here.  |
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| June 11th, 2020 Our new paper on using strategic ligand design and excited-state coherence with caged iron(II) polpyridyls to control ultrafast dynamics is online now at Nature! Check it out at the link below: Nature Article Our paper was also a featured article by the College of Natural Science, MSU Today, and Research@MSU! |
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| May 12th, 2020 Our new paper on the effect of solvent on the high-spin to low-spin conversion in [Fe(bpy)3]2+ is online now at Chemical Science! Check it out at the link below: DOI: 10.1039/D0SC01506G |
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| 1/10/2020 Our new paper on the influence of electrolyte composition on ultrafast interfacial electron transfer in iron-sensitized solar cells is online now! Check it out at the link below: DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b09404 |
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| January 1st, 2020 We would like to welcome the newest member of our group, Jyun Lien!  |
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| June 26th, 2019 Our paper on the use of ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy to address the spin-state of an iron(II) ligand-field excited-state is out now! Check it out at the link below: DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.9b01063 |
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| May 8th, 2019 Hayden Beissel succesfully passed his 2nd year oral examination! Now for some well deserved relaxation before getting back to his science! |
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| May 3rd, 2019 Shuxian Li walked at commencement today graduating with her Ph.D in chemistry! Congratulations on all your hard work!  *Shuxian is pictured third from the left in the front row |
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| April 4th, 2019 Bryan, Sara, and Jon attended the ACS Orlando National Meeting and gave talks in inorganic spectroscopy and synthesis!! Phenomenal work you three! Glad to have you back!  |
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| March 19th, 2019 Matt attended the BioLEC workshop at Princeton University and presented his current research with iron(II) polypyridyls. |
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| February 1st,
2019 Jim's new paper on how the primogenic effect plays an important role in electron transfer reactions of transition metal chromophores is out now! Click the DOI below for a link to the paper or the URL for a link to a related article in MSU today: DOI: 10.1126/science.aav9104 https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2019/periodic-table-still-influencing-todays-research/ |
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| January 20th,
2019 The McCusker Group is proud to be part of BioLEC, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center established on August 1, 2018 involving researchers from Princeton University, MIT, North Carolina State University, Arizona State University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory (and, of course, Michigan State University). The Center is focused on the development of bio-inspired approaches for using light in synthetic chemistry. Information about the science being carried out through BioLEC can be found at http://chemlabs.princeton.edu/biolec/ or by clicking the picture below. |
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| December 10th,
2018 Monica and Sara's variable temperature ultrafast spectroscopy paper is out in Chemical Science! Check it out at the link below: DOI: 10.1039/C8SC04025G |
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| November 11th,
2018 Katy Humphries and Sam Brineman have officially joined the McCusker group! Welcome to the group guys! |
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| October 1st, 2018 Our paper on ultrafast vibrational dynamics in Ru-bpy-CN is out now! Check it out at the link below: DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.8b06197 |
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