School of Chemistry
 

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Katharine Reid

Faculty of Science Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience, Professor of Chemical Physics, Faculty of Science

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Biography

Katharine Reid is Professor of Chemical Physics and the Faculty of Science Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience. In this role she works to share good practice and teaching initiatives between the schools in the Faculty, to contribute to and disseminate University policies and initiatives, to raise Faculty-level issues with the University, and to promote an excellent student experience. Katharine liaises regularly with Heads of School and Directors of Teaching and Learning, chairs the Faculty Education Committee and sits on the main University teaching & learning committees. Katharine served on the Natural Sciences TEF pilot panel in 2017/18 and 2018/19. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Member of the Institute of Physics and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Katharine obtained her D.Phil. in Chemical Physics from the University of Sussex and then took up an SERC/NATO fellowship at Stanford University where she worked on photoionization dynamics in the group of Professor R.N. Zare. She was awarded an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship in 1992, which she took up at the University of Nottingham. Continuing at Nottingham, she was appointed as Lecturer in Physical Chemistry in 1995; the first female lecturer in the School of Chemistry. She was promoted to Reader in 2002 and Professor of Chemical Physics in 2007. She is known internationally for her expertise in the measurement and interpretation of photoelectron angular distributions which are finding an ever-increasing number of applications. She has published two reviews in this area, one of which has been cited >350 times. Between 2016 and 2020 she coordinated a Marie Skłodowska Curie Innovative Training Network involving nine European partner institutions and entitled "Angular Studies of Photoelectrons in Innovative Research Environments" (674960, ASPIRE). Since 2017 Katharine's main focus has been providing leadership in teaching and learning.

Research Summary

We develop and use laser photoelectron imaging techniques, including ultrafast time-resolved techniques, to investigate structure and dynamics in the excited states of small polyatomic molecules. Our… read more

Recent Publications

Current Research

We develop and use laser photoelectron imaging techniques, including ultrafast time-resolved techniques, to investigate structure and dynamics in the excited states of small polyatomic molecules. Our ultrafast experiments are conducted with a unique laser system that produces pulses of 1 ps in duration, sufficiently short to monitor many intramolecular dynamical processes, but which have a spectral profile that enables the resolution of vibrational structure, and sometimes torsional structure, in small aromatic molecules. This capability, used in conjunction with novel methods of detection and analysis, has allowed us to quantitatively determine the coupling matrix elements that drive some of the energy redistribution processes in small polyatomic molecules. We are also developing techniques that enable us to use the photoelectron angular distributions derived from our photoelectron images to provide structural information on small polyatomic molecules.

PhD study topics include:

• Ultrafast time-resolved studies of the dynamics underpinning photochemical processes

• Determining enhanced dynamical information through laser-induced molecular alignment

School of Chemistry

University Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD

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