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Professor Kelley’s research focuses on using resonance Raman spectroscopy to study the molecular interaction of materials with light. Specifically, the detailed mechanisms of very fast photochemical reactions related to human vision, plant photosynthesis, photography and xerography.
She also has an interest in materials with strong nonlinear optical responses, which are used to convert electrical voice and data signals to optical signals for transmission over fiber-optic cables, and in advanced optical microscopy methods in biological and other imaging applications. Her group uses spectroscopic methods to understand and predict the nonlinear optical properties of molecules and, in particular, the manner in which those properties are modified by the intermolecular interactions that are necessarily present in useful materials.
Through her research, Professor Kelley’s also strives to describe the enhancement of scattering intensities observed for molecules adsorbed to the surfaces of silver and gold nanoparticles (surface enhanced Raman and hyper-Raman scattering, as well as other optical processes caused by coupling of the electronic transitions of molecules to the surface plasmon resonances of silver and gold nanoparticles, and carryies out experiments to test these theoretical descriptions.
