Leo Gordon

Background

I’m from a small town in Scotland famous for golf that now also achieves status as a fairytale town since a prince met a princess there. I then moved to Scotland's capital city to study chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, where I got started with electrochemistry investigating electrochemical sensors for my Master’s research. My goal of studying electrochemistry as a transition into electrochemical energy systems (e.g., batteries) led to me moving to New York City for my Ph.D., where I was tricked into transitioning from chemistry to chemical engineering at The City College of New York, CUNY. There I worked on aluminium (aluminum round these parts) batteries with Prof. Robert Messinger to identify new and interesting cathode materials - like small organic molecules - and study their charge storage mechanisms, primarily with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. You can find out a lot more on my website: https://leowgordon.github.io. In my free time, I love thinking about magnets and electrons, cooking, and bouldering.

Current Research

At UCSB, I will be investigating ion transport in polymeric materials primarily using magnetic resonance techniques, such as pulsed-field gradient (PFG) NMR and electrophoretic NMR, in addition to molecular-level characterization to understand local structures.

Education

• 2018-2023 – Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, The City College of New York, CUNY.
• 2012-2017 – M.Chem. in Chemistry, The University of Edinburgh.

Awards and Honors

• 2022: ECS Travel Award; Global NMR Twitter Conference Poster Award; Rocky Mountain Conference Travel Award.
• 2020: Grove School of Engineering Fellowship.
• 2019: Andreas Acrivos Graduate Fellowship.