Kishan Bharwad

Kishan earned his B.S./M.S. in chemistry from Loyola University Chicago, where he worked with Dr. Colin Gates, studying metabolic effects on photosystem I and II in red algae. As a first-year graduate student in Dr. Minjung Son’s lab, he uses ultrafast spectroscopy to study chromophores confined inside optical cavities. Coupling these pigments to the cavity’s confined light forms polaritons, hybrid light-matter states, through which he aims to learn whether the pigments’ energy flow can be tuned and optimized. Moreover, he is fabricating distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs), which offer a complementary approach for building and probing these polariton systems. Kishan plans to build a career as a physical chemist working at the intersection of spectroscopy and renewable energy to design improved technology for solar energy conversion.