Melissa Gish is a staff scientist in the Chemistry and Nanoscience Center at NREL. She received her doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the direction of Professor John Papanikolas. As part of the university’s Energy Frontier Research Center (Center for Solar Fuels), her work focused on the ultrafast photophysical dynamics of dye-sensitized photoelectrosynthesis cells. She joined NREL in 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher under the mentorship of Justin Johnson, studying ultrafast behavior of singlet fission molecules at interfaces.

Research Interests

Ultrafast photophysical dynamics

Charge transfer kinetics

Femtosecond spectroscopic techniques

Education

Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

B.S., Chemistry, University of Southern California

Professional Experience

Chair, Postdoc and Graduate Student Network, NREL (2020–2022)

Pride Coordinator, Full Spectrum Network, NREL (2019–2022)

Featured Work

Evaluation of Nanostructured β-Mn2V2O7 Thin Films as Photoanodes for Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation, Chemistry of Materials (2021)

Resolving Electron Injection From Singlet Fission-Borne Triplets Into Mesoporous Transparent Conducting Oxides, Chemical Science (2021)

Hydrogen Bonding Optimizes Singlet Fission in Carboxylic Acid Functionalized Anthradithiophene Films, ChemPhotoChem (2021)

Emerging Design Principles for Enhanced Solar Energy Utilization With Singlet Fission, Journal of Physical Chemistry C (2019)