September 2026 — New Paper, New Members & Lab News

It has been a busy and exciting start to the fall 2026 semester at Nie Lab (SHIELD Group). Here is a roundup of our latest news.

New Publication in Advanced Optical Materials

We are thrilled to share that our paper "Impact of Crystal Orientations on the Circular and Linear Dichroism Signals in Chiral Perovskite" has been published in Advanced Optical Materials. This work, led by PhD student Reshna Shrestha, reveals the distinct circular and linear dichroism signatures of a novel organo-inorganic chiral material using a home-built polarization-resolved spectroscopy setup that Reshna designed and built from scratch in just one year.

Disentangling true circular dichroism from linear dichroism artifacts in highly oriented crystalline films is one of the central challenges in chiral optics — and this work delivers a rigorous, experimentally validated methodology for doing exactly that. The results open a path toward understanding how molecular chirality is encoded in hybrid crystalline materials, with implications for chiro-optical sensing, asymmetric photocatalysis, and spin-selective optical devices.

Congratulations to Reshna and the entire team on this landmark result!

DOI: 10.1002/adom.71668

Welcome to New Group Members

We are delighted to welcome several new faces to the lab this semester. Postdoc scholars Seongheon Kim and Yuqian Yang have joined the group, bringing exciting new expertise. We also welcome incoming PhD students Gerrit Bosch and Anika Tabassum. We are so excited to work with you all and cannot wait to see the science you will create!

Congratulations to Gerrit Bosch

A special shoutout to Gerrit, who has already made an impression by winning the Best TA Award. Congratulations, Gerrit — a wonderful achievement right at the start of your PhD journey!

Sailesh Bataju at CAST Workshop

PhD student Sailesh Bataju presented his research at the CAST workshop this month. Great work representing the lab, Sailesh!

Stay tuned for more updates as the semester unfolds. It is going to be a great year for Nie Lab!