Kevin Kubarych

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Kubarych studied physical chemistry at Brown University (Sc.B., 1996) working the lab of Prof. Peter Weber, doing research on pulse shaping effects of fiber Bragg gratings. Having been bitten by the ultrafast bug, he headed to the University of Toronto to work with Prof. R. J. Dwayne Miller on multidimensional, fifth-order Raman spectroscopy of liquids (Ph.D. 2003).

Committed to the new field of multidimensional optical spectroscopy, Kevin moved to France, working in the Laboratoire d’Optique et Biosciences, a CNRS lab located at Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau. Supported by a Human Frontier Science Fellowship, he joined Drs. Manuel Joffre and Jean-Louis Martin to build a two-dimensional infrared spectrometer to study biomolecules and develop new techniques, such as chirped-pulse up conversion to detect broadband IR pulses.

In 2005, he established his independent research group at the University of Michigan’s Chemistry department in Ann Arbor. At UM, Kevin has developed 2D-IR spectroscopy as a general tool to unravel complex dynamical phenomena in a range of contexts, from biophysics to organometallic catalysis.

Some of his group’s current interests include in operando 2D-IR spectroelectrochemsitry as well as using ultrafast spectroscopy to understand how strong coupling to optical cavities can alter chemical reactions. Kevin is married to fellow ultrafast spectroscopist and UM Physics professor, Jennifer Ogilvie, and they have two children aged 10 and 14, as well as a joint optics facility: the Laboratory for Ultrafast Multidimensional Optical Spectroscopy (LUMOS).