About Joe
Joe was born in Staunton, Virginia. Following an enthusiastic viewing of the film Jurassic Park, Joe decided to pursue the physical sciences, starting by obtaining his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Virginia Tech in 2007. During his undergraduate career, Joe was enchanted by magnetism, falling in love with the concept of spin. Thus, he went to the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained a Ph.D. under the direction of Prof. Jeffrey R. Long, studying how coordination environments of transition metals can be used to generate powerful magnetic moments. When confined on a molecule, magnetic moments display quantum properties, a fact Joe became fascinated with during his graduate studies. He therefore pursued postdoctoral studies with Prof. Danna E. Freedman at Northwestern University, creating design principles for coordination complexes to serve as quantum bits - the units of information in a quantum computer. At Colorado State University, Joe and his coworkers harness this background, by employing synthetic chemistry to command the quantum properties of material and molecular magnets. In the long term, this knowledge will be vital for new applications in disparate fields spanning from reaction discovery to biomedical imaging. In his spare time, Joe enjoys cycling, origami, challenging video games, and ingesting fermented beverages.