Contributors to the Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers Emerging Investigator Series 2025

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Abstract

The Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers Emerging Investigators Series highlights the best research being conducted by scientists in the early stages of their independent careers. This profile features the researchers who have contributed to the Emerging Investigators Series in 2025. Each contributor was recommended as carrying out work with the potential to influence future directions in inorganic chemistry. Congratulations to all the researchers featured. We hope you enjoy reading their work.

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Adam Jaffe is an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Notre Dame. He received his A.B. in chemistry from Princeton University (2012), followed by his PhD in inorganic chemistry from Stanford University (2017). There, he worked with Prof. Hemamala I. Karunadasa to explore the optical and electronic properties of hybrid materials, including their energy-storage, light-emission, and compression-induced behavior. He joined the lab of Prof. Jeffrey R. Long at the University of California, Berkeley (2017–2021) as an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow, where he studied the separation of O₂ from air in redox-active porous materials. He then started his independent career at the University of Notre Dame in 2021, where the Jaffe Group now develops new hybrid material platforms to target energy-related challenges and examines their structure–property relationships, including under high pressure.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI01602A

Website: https://sites.nd.edu/jaffelab/

Jakoah Brgoch is the Eby Nell McElrath Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston, with joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is also a principal investigator in the Texas Center for Superconductivity. His research integrates solid-state chemistry, materials science, computation, and data science to design and develop new functional materials. His group focuses on discovering luminescent, magnetic, and superhard materials using an integrated approach that combines experimental synthesis, advanced characterization, first-principles computation, and machine learning.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI00410A

Website: https://www.brgochchemistry.com/

Johannes Karges studied chemistry at Philipps-University Marburg (Germany) and Imperial College London (UK). In 2016, he began his PhD with Prof. Gilles Gasser at Paris Sciences et Lettres University (France) and Prof. Hui Chao at Sun Yat-Sen University (China), developing metal complexes as photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy and their targeted delivery to cancer tissue. In 2020, he conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Seth Cohen at UC San Diego (USA), focusing on metal complexes as enzyme inhibitors. Since 2022, he has led an independent group at Ruhr University Bochum (Germany) with a Liebig fellowship and was appointed assistant professor in 2025. His research interest lies on the interface of inorganic and medicinal chemistry, focusing on the modulation and specific intervention into biological processes with metal complexes towards the development of novel therapeutic agents.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI01287B

Website: https://www.kargesgroup.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/

Joshua A. Buss earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology working with Theodor Agapie. Following a postdoctoral appointment in the group of Shannon S. Stahl, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Josh initiated his independent career at the University of Michigan in 2020. The Buss Lab investigates the synthesis and reactivity of atomically precise multinuclear cluster complexes, as a means of developing more efficient catalytic protocols germane to energy science and human health through deliberately engineered metal–metal cooperativity.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI00334B

Website: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/jbuss/

Qingyun Wan received her bachelor's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2014 and conducted the final-year project in the research group of Prof. Li-Zhu Wu and Prof. Chen-Ho Tung at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). After that, she joined the research group of Prof. Chi-Ming Che at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) to pursue her PhD in chemistry, which she completed in 2019. In 2017, she visited and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), under the guidance of Prof. Christopher C. Cummins. From 2020 to 2022, she visited and studied in Prof. Xiaodong Cui's group in the Department of Physics, HKU. In 2022–2023, she went to Tohoku University in Japan for a six-month visit and study, under the guidance of Prof. Masahiro Yamashita. In 2024, she joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. Her research interests focus on the interdisciplinary research between inorganic chemistry and physics, particularly on the physical properties of d- and f-block metal complexes.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI01270H

Website: https://qywan9.wixsite.com/group

Saurabh S. Chitnis obtained his Ph.D. with Neil Burford at the University of Victoria (2015), where his doctoral thesis was recognized with a Governor General's Gold Medal. He then performed postdoctoral research with Ian Manners at the University of Bristol as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow (2015–2017) and later with Doug Stephan at the University of Toronto (2017–2018). He started his independent career at Dalhousie University in July 2018, where in 2023 he received tenure and was promoted to associate professor and University Research Chair. In 2025, he moved to the University of Victoria as a Canada Research Chair in Inorganic Materials & Polymers. Research in the Chitnis lab focuses on molecular and macromolecular main group chemistry. Select honours include the Dalhousie President's Research Excellence Award, Science Killam Prize, the CNC-IUPAC National Travel Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Chemistry Undergraduate Teaching Award. In his free time, Saurabh enjoys coastal hiking, brewing fine beers, biking, and pretending he is a MasterChef, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI02115D

Website: https://www.chitnislab.ca/

Simon Krause studied chemistry at the University of Nottingham and TU Dresden and received his PhD from TU Dresden in 2019 on “Negative gas adsorption in flexible metal–organic frameworks”. Following postdoctoral research at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, he became an independent group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany in 2021. Since 2025, he has been a professor of inorganic chemistry at Ulm University. His research interests include the synthesis and functionalization of metal- and covalent-organic frameworks, molecular machines and switches, light-responsive systems, dynamic catalysis, and new approaches toward energy conversion and storage. In his free time, you will find him with his family, at a lacrosse field or behind a camera.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4QI02724H

Website: https://simonkrause-chem.de/

Stacy M. Copp is an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Irvine. She earned her B.S. in physics and mathematics from the University of Arizona and her Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was later a Hoffman Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory before starting her group at UC Irvine in 2019. Copp's research interests include DNA-stabilized metal nanoclusters, DNA nanotechnology, self-assembly, and machine learning for experimental materials discovery. Her research has been recognized by awards such as the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, DOE Early Career Research Program, ARL/DEVCOM Early Career Award, and NIH Director's New Innovator Award.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI01833A

Website: https://copplab.eng.uci.edu

Xiulin Yang is a professor in the School of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Guangxi Normal University. He obtained his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2013. From 2013 to 2018, he conducted postdoctoral research at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. He has been granted 24 Chinese invention patents. His research interests focus on electrocatalysis and hydrogen–oxygen fuel cells.

EMI article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5QI01685A

Website: https://www.x-mol.com/groups/yang_xiulin

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