Picture of Dr. Amy Stevens

Dr. Amy Stevens Assistant Professor, Pronouns: she/her

Research Area(s)

  • Photochemistry/photophysics
  • Ultrafast optical spectroscopy
  • Dynamics in molecules/arrays of molecules
  • Molecular upconversion/downconversion
  • DNA nanotechnology
  • Biomimetic materials

Research Experience Overview

Materials

Porphyrin chromophores in multichromophoric arrays, porphyrins in dilute solutions of good/poor solvents, light-harvesting complex II extracted from spinach leaves, micelles formed from naphthalene/benzothiadiazole-derivative amphiphilic molecules, oligothymine single-stranded DNA decorated with naphthalene-derivative chromophores.

Experiments

Ultrafast lasers including femtosecond fiber and solid state lasers, regenerative amplifiers, pulse stretchers and compressors, non-collinear optic parametric amplifiers, acousto-optic pulse shaping, frequency resolved optical gating (FROG), time correlated single photon counting (TCSPC), pump-probe transient absorption, two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy, single-molecule epifluorescence microscopy, Raman microscopy, Langmuir trough film preparation, and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) and X-ray reflectivity (XR) at the Advanced Photon Source.

Memberships/Affiliations

  • 2020 - Present: Member, Editorial board of Dyes and Pigments
  • 2020 - Present: Member, Review Editor in Quantum Optics (specialty section of Frontiers in Photonics)
  • 2020 - Present: Member, Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) 
  • 2019 - Present: Member, Centre for Quantum Topology and Its Applications (quanTA) at the University of Saskatchewan
  • 2019 - Present: Member, Canadian Society for Chemistry
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Employment

  • 2019 - Present: Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
  • 2017 - 2019: Research Associate, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
  • 2017–2019: Research Associate/Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Chemistry, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
  • 2012 - 2016: Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto. As part of a fellowship with the Max Planck Institute for Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, Germany.
  • 2011–2012: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Max Planck Research Group for Atomically Resolved Dynamics,
    University of Hamburg/DESY, Germany.

Education

  • 2007 - 2011: DPhil (PhD) in Physics, Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK.
    Thesis: "Energy transfer processes in supramolecular light-harvesting systems".
  • 2003 - 2007: BA with Honours in Physics, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland.