Functional Inorganic Materials at UMD

Group Twitter

The best way to keep up with lab news is by following our group twitter page @RodriguezLabUMD. Lot of pictures, manuscript announcements, and a great place to network!

Bringing Back Summer BBQ's!

For the first time since COVID and Dr. Rodriguez's sabbatical, we met as a group to start back up our summer BBQ's! Getting ready to kick off the Fall 2022 semester!

Promoted to Full Professor

Received the letter from President Pines that I have been promoted to Full Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Incredibly grateful to all my students, past and present, who have been on this adventure with me. Lucky to have great colleagues too!

GRC Meeting - 2022

Enjoyed having a small Rodriguez reunion at GRC! Tianyu and Lahari enjoyed hiking with Xiuquan Zhou who graduated from our group in 2018!

ACNS Meeting - 2022

Stephanie, Tim, and Tianyu attended and presented at the American Conference for Neutron Scattering (ACNS) in the gorgeous Boulder, CO mountains!

Kaitlyn Dold - Undergaduate Highlight

Kaitlyn Dold's excellent research in our lab led her to graduating with High Honors in Chemistry and for winning the ACS Inorganic Chemistry Award! She is headed to start her graduate career at UC Irvine in the Fall of 2022. 

ACS National Meeting - 2022

ACS San Diego was a hit! Our group was well represented with two talks and three posters sharing lots of exciting results. Good to be back in person! Lahari, Tim, Kaitlyn, and Vince are pictured here.

UMD Video Feature

We are fortunate to be one of the Advanced Materials Research groups that will be moving to the new chemistry building at UMD in 2023! Learn more about the new chemistry building and our group with this fun video feature: 

Breaking Ground - New Chemistry Building

In August 2021, we broke ground on the new chemistry building – a leading-edge facility that will enable new discoveries and transformational research and innovation. Our student Matt had the privilege to represent the chemistry students in the department in the ceremony (far right).

First in person meeting post COVID !

With restrictions lightening up at UMD, we were able to meet in person for the first time in over a year! Perfect timing to say goodbye and best of luck to our postdoc Jacob Tosado. Enjoy ORNL!

3D Printing

Our group is also working in the 3d printing lab at UMD! We designed an inorganic VSPER molecule kit that can now be viewed and printed to aid in the classroom. Free 3D printing files can be found here.

Fundamentals of Quantum Materials

Book finally out! Great fun working with all the authors. 

Check it out here

Virtual Meetings

When we wish we are together as a group mid pandemic, we try and make things better by showing what inorganic materials each group member is working on!

Congrats Dr. Wilfong!

Congratulations to our most recent graduate, Dr. Brandon Wilfong! Brandon was in the highly competitive Chemical Physics Program and defended his dissertation in spring of 2020.

Congrats Dr. Virtue!

Congratulations to Dr. Austin Virtue for defending his thesis in 2019! His thesis was entitled "Structure and Properties of Alloyed Chalcogenides with the ThCr2Si2 Type Structure"

Pittsburgh Powder Diffraction Conference - 2019

This was the Pittsburgh Powder Diffraction Conference/Workshop with Dr. Jennifer Aitken in 2019. Tim Diethrich and Tianyu Li both won awards for their research posters.

Congrats Dr. Jayathilake!

Congratulations to Dr. Rishvi Jayathilake for successfully defending her thesis in August 2019! We're very proud of you!

ACA Meeting - 2018

Congratulations to lab member, Stephanie Gnewuch, for winning the Margaret C. Etter Student Lecture Award in Neutron Scattering. Stephanie received the award after delivering her talk at the American Crystallographic Association national meeting.