About the Seminar: 

Research in the Cossairt lab is focused on the solution-phase synthesis of chemical systems capable of sunlight absorption, color-pure emission, charge transfer, and fuels generation. Towards this end we seek to address fundamental challenges in the field of inorganic chemistry, specifically controlling the composition, structure and function of nanoscale light absorbers and catalysts, and controlling the interactions between them. This talk will focus primarily on our efforts to understand the precursor conversion reactions, nucleation and growth mechanisms, and approaches to the post-synthetic transformation of indium phosphide quantum dots for use in solid-state lighting and displays. This research has catalyzed a number of other areas of investigation including the synthesis of other pnictide-based nanomaterials for use in light harvesting and catalysis that will also be discussed.

About the Speaker:

Brandi Cossairt was born and raised in Miami, Florida. She is a first-generation college graduate, having obtained her B. S. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2006. Brandi went on to pursue graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Professor Christopher C. Cummins and was awarded her Ph.D. in 2010. She then continued her academic career as an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University between 2010 and 2012 working with Professor Jonathan Owen. Brandi joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington as an Assistant Professor in 2012 and was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in 2018. She has received a number of awards for her research including a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Packard Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the National Fresenius Award from the American Chemical Society. Outside of the lab Brandi is an Associate Editor at the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry and is the co-founder of the Chemistry Women Mentorship Network (ChemWMN).