Dr. Zach VanOrman began working at Hope College as an assistant professor of chemistry in 2025. He will be teaching General Chemistry I and II lecture and lab sections. His research mainly involves the synthesis and engineering of semiconductor nanocrystals, which is 1–10 nm in size, roughly 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. His research is for applications in quantum information and clean energy generation.

Before his time at Hope, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard (Rowland Institute) from 2022–2024 and then a research scientist at The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. 

Broad areas of Expertise

• Synthetic materials chemistry (synthesizing materials for applications using a variety of chemical methods)
• Experimental physical chemistry (using optical spectroscopy to probe photoactive properties of synthesized/engineered materials)

Specific areas of Expertise

• Synthesis and surface engineering of semiconductor nanocrystals
• Time resolved optical spectroscopy
• Design, engineering and analysis of functional chiral semiconductor materials

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., chemistry, Florida State University, 2022
  • Faculty Advisor: Professor Lea Nienhaus
  • Dissertation: Dimensionality tuning of triplet sensitizers for triplet-triplet annihilation based upconversion
• B.S., chemistry, Hillsdale College, 2018 

Academic Experience

• Research scientist, EPFL, Switzerland, 2024–2025
• Postdoctoral research fellow, Rowland Institute, Harvard University, 2022–2024

HONORS, GRANTS & AWARDS,

• Russel H. Johnson Dissertation Award (highest award bestowed by FSU chemistry department), Florida State University Chemistry and Biochemistry, 2023 
• Physical Chemistry Graduate Student Award, Florida State University, 2022
• Cheryl and Joel Rosenfield Award, Florida State University, 2021

Selected Oral Presentations

• NanoGe Materials for Sustainable Development Conference, Lausanne, 2024
• Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, Boston, 2024
• American Chemical Society Spring Meeting, New Orleans, 2024
• Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, Boston, 2023
• Summer Idea Smash Symposium, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Massachusetts, 2023

Selected publications

For a full list of publications, see Dr. VanOrman’s CV

• “Broadband Transient Full-Stokes Luminescence Spectroscopy with High Sensitivity,” with A.P.M. Reponen et al., Nature, 2025, 643
• “Metal Doping of Strongly Confined Halide Perovskite Nanocrystals under Ambient Conditions,” with M.C. Wuttig et al., Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2025, 147
• “Narrow-Linewidth Emission and Weak Exciton-Phonon Coupling in 2D Layered Germanium Halide Perovskites,” with B. Savinson et al., Advanced Materials, 2025, 37
• “The Effect of Charge Carrier Cooling on the Ultrafast Carrier Dynamics in Cs₂AgBiBr₆ Thin Films,” with H.J. Jöbsis et al., ACS Energy Letters, 2025, 10
• “An Experimental Data Library for the Full CsPb(ClₓBr₁₋ₓ)₃ Compositional Series,” with K.O. Mastej et al., Chemical Communications, 2025, 61
• “Chiral Light-Matter Interactions in Solution-Processable Semiconductors,” with W.R. Kitzmann et al., Nature Reviews Chemistry, 2025, 9
• “From Chalcogen Bonding to S–π Interactions in Hybrid Perovskite Photovoltaics,” with W. Luo et al., Advanced Science, 2024
• “Fundamentals, Advances, and Artifacts in Circularly Polarized Luminescence (CPL) Spectroscopy,” with W.R. Kitzmann, J. Freudenthal, A.P.M. Reponen and S. Feldmann, Advanced Materials, 2023
• “Mechanistic Insight into CdSe Nanoplatelet-Sensitized Upconversion: Size and Stacking Induced Effects,” with R. Weiss, A.S. Bieber and L. Nienhaus, Chemical Communications, 2023, 59
• “Surface Doping Boosts Triplet Generation Yield in Perovskite Sensitized Upconversion,” with C.M. Sullivan et al., Advanced Optical Materials, 2023, 11

Outside Hope 

Zach is an avid sports fan (Green Bay Packers and Detroit Tigers), and has played sports his entire life, including football all throughout college at Hillsdale College. Currently, he loves playing pickup basketball and running, even completing two marathons. He lives in Holland with his wife and their dog, Cooper, where they all like going on long walks and enjoying the water. They also love traveling (hence the European postdoc), mostly to try new delicious food!