Chemistry Welcomes New Faculty Member, Dr. Agnes Thorarinsdottir

The Department of Chemistry warmly welcomes Dr. Agnes Thorarinsdottir as an assistant professor of chemistry.

Dr. Thorarinsdottir was born and raised in Akureyri, Iceland, and moved to the capital, Reykjavik, to pursue her undergraduate degree in chemistry. As an undergraduate researcher, she realized her passion for inorganic chemistry through coursework and working in the laboratory of Krishna Damodaran on metalloligands and metal–organic frameworks.

She moved to the United States to obtain her PhD degree with Dave Harris at Northwestern University, where she also developed a broad skillset in molecular and materials chemistry. In 2020, Dr. Thorarinsdottir moved to Cambridge, MA, to join the research group of Dan Nocera at Harvard University. As a Harvard University Center for the Environment Postdoctoral Fellow, she started a new collaborative effort between the groups of Dan Nocera and Jarad Mason to study the effects of microporous water on electrocatalytic reactions of energy relevance.

And now, she begins an exciting new chapter of her career with us at the University of Rochester!

The Thorarinsdottir group will seek to apply the tools of synthetic molecular and materials chemistry to the design of new electrochemical systems that address challenges in energy, catalysis, and environmental sustainability. They are developing new synthetic strategies for enabling precise control of the chemical and physical properties of electrochemical interfaces in efforts to increase the energy efficiency and selectivity of reactions and devices. Particular emphasis is placed on creating new electrochemical systems for (i) sustainable production of electricity, fuels, and organic chemicals, (ii) efficient energy conversion, and (iii) electrochemical sensing.