Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

Biography

Fall 2017

Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame

2014-2017

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Washington

2014

Ph.D. in Chemistry, California Institute of Technology

2008

B.S. in Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Selected Awards

2021

National Science Foundation CAREER Award

2014-2017

Ruth L. Kirschstein NIH Postdoctoral Fellow

2014

ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award

2014

Herbert Newby McCoy Award, California Institute of Technology

2009-2012

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Research Interests

Research in the Tsui group will focus on the development of new catalysts using principles and techniques from the areas of bioinorganic, organometallic, and nanomaterials chemistry. Biological enzymes and heterogeneous catalysts are capable of activating very strong bonds in small molecules with high activity and specificity. We will design transition metal complexes and nanoscale materials as models of these systems, incorporating new structural or compositional motifs from enzymatic or heterogeneous active sites to enhance the performance of our artifical catalytic systems. An improved fundamental understanding of these systems will have important applications in chemical synthesis, liquid fuels production, and energy storage.

Recent Publications

• Prather, K. V.; Stoffel, J. T. and Tsui, E. Y. "Z-Type Ligand Coordination at Colloidal Semiconductor Nanocrystals Modifies Surface Electrostatics" 2022 Chemistry of Materials, 34 (9), pp.3976-3984. DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c04439.
• Stoffel, J. T.; Riordan, K. T. and Tsui, E. Y. "Accelerated Reduction and Solubilization of Elemental Sulfur by 1,2-Aminothiols" 2021 Chemical Communications, 57 (93), pp.12488-12491. DOI: 10.1039/d1cc05242j.
• Prather, K. V.; Lee, S. and Tsui, E. Y. "Metal-Carbonyl-Functionalized CdSe Nanocrystals: Synthesis, Surface Redox, and Infrared Intensities" 2021 Inorganic Chemistry, 60 (7), pp.4269-4277. DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c03641.
• Ballesteros, M. and Tsui, E. Y. "Sulfur Transfer Reactions of a Zinc Tetrasulfanido Complex" 2020 Dalton Transactions, 49 (45), pp.16305-16311. DOI: 10.1039/d0dt01384f.
• Schival, K. A.; Gipson, R. R.; Prather, K. V. and Tsui, E. Y. "Photoinduced Surface Charging in Iron-Carbonyl-Functionalized Colloidal Semiconductor Nanocrystals" 2019 Nano Letters, 19 (11), pp.7770-7774. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02726.
• Ballesteros, M. and Tsui, E. Y. "Reactivity of Zinc Thiolate Bonds: Oxidative Organopolysulfide Formation and S-3 Insertion" 2019 Inorganic Chemistry, 58 (16), pp.10501-10507. DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.9b01074.