Prof. Gaynor (Chemistry, joined summer 2023) develops cutting-edge ultrafast spectroscopy at the physics-chemistry frontier. Directions: (1) Attochemistry — new ultrafast laser spectroscopies operating on attosecond to femtosecond timescales to directly measure how electron spin and orbital motion couple to molecular geometry (spin-vibronic coupling) in chiral molecules and materials of interest for energy conversion and spintronics; (2) Multidimensional nonlinear spectroscopy (2D electronic spectroscopy, 2D vibrational) to track energy and charge transfer immediately after photoexcitation; (3) Instrumentation-first approach: building novel attosecond transient absorption and correlation spectroscopy apparatus from scratch, enabling entirely new observables (e.g., electron-nuclear and spin-orbital correlations). INQUIRE faculty affiliate. Beckman Young Investigator 2025 ($600k, 4 yrs); Packard Fellow 2025 ($875k, 5 yrs).

Leone's group generates attosecond and few-femtosecond XUV/X-ray pulses to track electron dynamics and charge migration in molecules and materials in real time, pushing time-domain spectroscopy toward the natural timescale of electronic motion.