Christy Landes

Christy Landes is a Professor of Chemistry, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. She directs the Center for Adapting Flaws into Features (CAFF) and develops advanced spectroscopic tools to study single-molecule and interfacial dynamics for predictive materials design.

• Ph.D. in Chemistry from Georgia Institute of Technology (2003)
• B.S. in Chemistry from George Mason University (1998)
• NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Texas-Austin (2004-2006)
• Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Oregon (2003-2004)

Her research focuses on single-molecule spectroscopy, nanoscale interfacial dynamics, and data science-driven imaging to decode biological and synthetic structure-function relationships. She applies these methods to predictive separations, photocatalysis, and breaking the Abbe diffraction limit for nanoscale resolution.

Recent publications highlight trends in plasmonics, machine learning for nanoparticle synthesis, substrate effects on nanomaterials, and interfacial charge transfer, reflecting her interdisciplinary work bridging physical chemistry, nanotechnology, and materials engineering.

Scientific awards include:

• 2023 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• 2024 Kazuhiko Kinosita Award in Single-Molecule Biophysics

She has advised students like Emily Searles (Ph.D. defense, 2023), Jagriti Chatterjee, and Zhenyang Jia, who have won departmental awards. Her lab also emphasizes innovative educational initiatives, such as undergraduate data science and instrumentation labs. Current research includes collaborations and grants from the National Science Foundation to advance nanomaterials and synthetic design principles.