Society for Applied Spectroscopy Barbara Stull Graduate Student Award

Recognizing a graduate student for outstanding research in spectroscopy and presented in honor of our longtime colleague Barbara L. Stull

Jay Kitt

Jay Kitt graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Utah in 2011. As an undergraduate he began pursuing research with Joel Harris and working on the use of confocal Raman microscopy in porous chromatographic silica particles. For progress in this research, Jay was awarded the 2011 Department of Chemistry Undergraduate Research Award. After graduating, Jay has continued research in the Harris lab, pursuing a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry. As a graduate student, Jay’s research and teaching have both been recognized. In 2012, he was awarded a research fellowship in the National Science Foundation’s Nanobiosensors, Nanomaterials, and Microfluidics IGERT program. That same year, his excellence as a teaching assistant in the undergraduate analytical chemistry courses was honored with the 2012 W.W. Epstein Outstanding Educator award. In the fall of 2014, the Coblentz Society recognized Jay’s research in Raman spectroscopy with a Coblentz Student Award. Currently, Jay is continuing his Ph.D. research focused on using confocal Raman microscopy to probe interfacial environments within nanoporous materials and optical-trapping confocal Raman microscopy to investigate phospholipid vesicle phase-transitions.