Speaker: Prof Selvan Demir, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University
Title: Organometallic Single-Molecule Magnets Containing Radicals and Bismuth
Selvan Demir is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Michigan State University. She studied chemistry at the University of Cologne and received her Diploma in 2007. She received her PhD in Chemistry (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Cologne in 2010 researching on scandium solid state chemistry with Prof. Gerd Meyer and scandium organometallic chemistry with Prof. William J. Evans at the University of California, Irvine. In 2011, Selvan accepted a DAAD Postdoctoral Fellowship and began her postdoctoral research on lanthanide-based single-molecule magnets and porous aromatic frameworks with Prof. Jeffrey R. Long at the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a postdoctoral research affiliate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working on neptunium, plutonium, and americium chemistry with Dr. David K. Shuh. Subsequently, she was a Junior Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Göttingen. In 2019, she joined Michigan State University. Her research program focuses on small molecule activation, molecular magnetism, and quantum information science, with the rare earth and actinide elements. Specifically, she works on single-molecule magnets, single-chain magnets, 2D and 3D solid state magnetic materials including porous frameworks, molecular lanthanide-based qubits, and organic qubits. She published 51 papers in prestigious journals and gave 121 invited seminars as plenary, keynote, or invited speaker at conferences, departments, and symposia in 24 countries. She received several awards such as the NSF CAREER Award in 2024 and the American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee (WCC) 2025 Rising Star Award.
