2:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Oregon Center for Electrochemistry Seminar
Jeiwan Tan, Materials, Chemistry, and Computational Sciences Directorate National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO
Chirality induced spin selectivity suppresses competing hydrogen evolution during electrochemical CO2 reduction
Catalysts for electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2R) in aqueous electrolytes suffer from low Faradaic efficiency and selectivity of desired carbon products due to the competing hydrogen evolution from water reduction. Over the few years, a concept of chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) has been proposed to improve the efficiency of oxygen evolution reactions by stabilizing only one spin state of charge carriers at the catalyst surface. It was demonstrated that the formation of hydrogen peroxide and singlet oxygen was suppressed during the water oxidation reaction. However, this CISS phenomenon has not been studied during the reduction reaction at the cathode side. Here, we prepare chiral, helical-structured copper (Cu) electrodes that exhibit an exceptionally strong circular dichroism anisotropy factor and manifest product selectivity control during the CO2R owing to CISS. In situ spectro-electrochemistry is employed to investigate the role of the chirality inducer in real-time during the electrodeposition and under actual electrochemical CO2R conditions. Regardless of their handedness, the chiral Cu electrodes exhibit a lower onset potential for CO2R compared to their achiral counterpart by suppressing the hydrogen evolution reaction. I will also discuss how the carriers traveling through the helical structure become spin polarized, inducing an electron spin accumulation at the electrode surface. This spin polarization reduces hydrogen formation, thereby promoting CO2 reduction to CO and formate due to the Pauli exclusion principle for bond formation. These findings provide insights into the potential of chiral catalysts for controlling selectivity during CO2R as well as other valuable reduction reactions such as nitrogen or CO reduction where hydrogen evolution is also an undesired side reaction.
5:00–8:00 p.m.
Please join Women in Graduate Sciences for our 11th Annual Fundraising Gala. We are hosting two back-to-back events designed to provide an engaging and informative evening celebrating women and marginalized genders in STEM!
From 5 to 6 PM, join us for a cocktail hour where community members are invited to learn about WGS's initiatives, meet our executive board, and hear from WGS members, including scholarship winners and our outreach team. Stay for the main event from 6-8 PM, where we welcome everyone for a buffet style dinner, banquet raffle, and exciting seminar by Dr. Laura Ackerman-Biegasiewicz, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Emory University whose research focuses on developing technology for accelerating reaction discovery in sustainable chemistry.
As the annual WGS fundraising benefit, the event offers a sliding scale of ticket prices ($50 for students, $100 for non-students, and $800 for an 8-person table). Purchase tickets or donate to WGS.
3:00–4:00 p.m.
Graduate students! Perfect your skills in creating captivating and concise posters tailored for the Graduate Research Forum and any upcoming conference. This webinar will equip you with the essential principles of modern poster design, enabling you to simplify complex ideas, integrate visuals effectively, and deliver your message within the strict space confines of a poster. Whether you're a novice or an experienced presenter, don't miss this opportunity to learn the art of creating impactful poster that reinforce your research narrative and engage your audience. Register at https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/b75dada44ac6432e9100b9271193c184
10:00 a.m.
Please join us Tuesday mornings for a free cup of coffee, pastries, and conversation with your history department community! We’re excited to continue this tradition for our history undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. We hope to see you there!
3:30–5:00 p.m.
The Department of History is pleased to welcome Professor Laurie Marhoefer (University of Washington) for the 2025 Pierson Lecture: "Trans Berlin: The World's First Trans Politics, Berlin's Queer Golden Age, and the Rise of Fascism, 1918 – 1933."
In 1918, Germany had a democratic revolution. In the fourteen years that followed, Berlin became the most open city in the world for transgender men and women. They organized the world's first trans political groups. They ran magazines for and by trans people. They helped to establish the beginnings of legal and medical transition, working with city police and with Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science. Then, the Nazis came to power and destroyed trans Berlin. Yet, much of what trans people fought for in the 1920s has become a reality today. This talk explores the fascinating lives of transgender women and men in the 1920s and the world they created.
The Annual Pierson Lecture is a Department of History tradition that spans back to 1993, when it was founded to honor Stan and Joan Pierson. The Piersons were both exemplary citizens of the community, dedicated to history and education as proven by their distinguished records of intellectual accomplishment and community involvement. This lecture series brings distinguished scholars to the University of Oregon, so that they may share their work in alignment with the Piersons’ interests in cultural, intellectual, and political life.
7:30 p.m.
Join the Creative Writing Program for a screening of Rule Breakers (2025) and Q&A with Director Bill Guttentag, Writer & UO Creative Writing Professor Jason Brown, Actor Amber Afzali, and Actor Nina Hosseinzadeh.
7:30 pm on Tuesday, April 8 in the EMU Redwood Auditorium Free and Open to the Community
Film Synopsis: In a nation where educating girls is seen as rebellion, a visionary woman dares to teach young minds to dream. When their innovation draws global attention, their success sparks hope—and opposition. As threats loom and sacrifices are made, their courage and unity ignite a movement that could forever transform the world.
2025 | 2 Hours | Rated PG
11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Did you know you can have someone review your resume before the Spring Career & Internship Expo on 4/17? Drop-in with a career readiness coach or peer coach in Tykeson Hall Commons to get feedback on your resume! Free cookies & hot chocolate too :)
Don’t have a resume? Come learn how to make one! ALL students are welcome to participate!
Want to apply for the Peace Corps? We'll also have returned Peace Corps volunteers available to review resumes and give advice about the application process with any interested students! Ask for Carolyn Williams!
This University Career Center event is part of the 2025 Spring Career Readiness Week sponsored by Enterprise Mobility and Sherwin Williams. To learn more about all of the week's events visit http://career.uoregon.edu/events
6:00–7:00 a.m.
As graduate students wrap up their thesis work and consider next steps, many may consider a postdoc. This session, generously made possible by the University of Tennessee Knoxville, will provide a brief presentation, which will be followed with a panel of faculty, who serve as postdoc mentors. Panelists will share their perspective and offer their advice with ample time for questions and answers. Graduate students are welcome to attend; doctoral students in dissertation stage are the intended audience. Go to https://tiny.utk.edu/grad-to-postdoc
noon
Join cinema studies for “Evolving Animation Through its Long, Lost Past: An Artist Talk with Eric Dyer.”
Free and open to the community.
Animation is still a young art form with many underexplored avenues of expression. Although the lay-person’s view of animation is still predominantly as entertainment on screens, it can also exist as participatory sculpture and painting, immersive kinetic environments, live performance visuals, and as experiences of exploration and discovery. Such forms and experiences challenge us to rethink what animation is and how it can engage people. Artist Eric Dyer draws on all of this and more through works based on one of the keystones of animation – the zoetrope, or the ‘wheel of life’.
Artist Eric Dyer, dubbed The Modern Master of the Zoetrope by Creative Capital, brings animation into the material world through his sequential images, sculptures, installations, and performances. He has been honored as a Fulbright Fellow, Sundance New Frontier Artist, Creative Capital Grantee, and Guggenheim Fellow. Dyer has been a visiting artist at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh), East China Normal University (Shanghai, China), California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles), and the Royal College of Art (London, UK), among others. His participatory animated sculptures and award-winning films have been widely exhibited at prestigious international events and venues such as the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Ars Electronica (Austria), Tabakalera (Spain), ARoS Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), and at the Cairo and Venice Biennales. His talk on TED.com, The Forgotten Art of the Zoetrope [go.ted.com/ericdyer], has been viewed over 1.1 million times.
Cosponsored by the UO Minor in Comics and Cartoon Studies, the Department of Art, the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, the Department of History, and the generous donation from the Kaplan family.
3:00–4:00 p.m.
Looking for a job or internship and need help getting started?! Learn how to utilize Handshake and networking strategies to find opportunities that align with your interests; and how to get university credit for an internship (UGST404).
This event is part of the 2025 Spring Career Readiness Week sponsored by the University Career Center, Enterprise Holdings, and Sherwin Williams. To learn more about all of the week's events visit http://career.uoregon.edu/events