Faculty of Science: New professors lecture
Showcasing our newest voices in research and teaching.
May 6, 2026 — 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Meet the newest members of our Faculty of Science as they present their research and share what inspires their work. This event highlights fresh perspectives and the diverse expertise shaping today’s scientific landscape.
Meet the speakers
Explore the backgrounds, research, and expertise of our speakers.
Zenghu Chang
Professor and Canada Excellence Research Chair, Department of Physics
High-Intensity Mid-Infrared Lasers for Driving Next-Generation Attosecond X-ray Sources
Summary
Attosecond X‑ray sources, which generate flashes of light lasting billionths of a billionth of a second, provide a powerful way to observe the fastest processes in nature, including electron motion in atoms, molecules, and condensed matter. Recent advances in ultrafast laser technology have enabled such sources on the laboratory tabletop, greatly expanding access beyond large‑scale facilities.
A key driver of this progress has been the development of few‑cycle, high‑peak‑power lasers operating at longer wavelengths (1.6–2 µm). When focused into gases, these lasers produce coherent X‑ray radiation in the water window (282–533 eV), covering the K‑shell excitations of carbon and oxygen and enabling element‑specific imaging and spectroscopy. Building on this, my research program focuses on pushing tabletop X‑ray sources to higher photon energies and efficiencies using ultrafast mid‑infrared drivers. Our lab has developed femtosecond Fe:ZnSe chirped‑pulse amplifiers centered at 4 µm and demonstrated OPCPA systems extending beyond 3 µm, providing new opportunities to explore wavelength scaling laws in strong‑field atomic, molecular, and plasma physics.
Biography
Zenghu Chang earned his bachelor’s degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 1982, followed by a master’s and a doctorate from the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1985 and 1988, respectively. In 2010, he joined the University of Central Florida, where he served as a University Trustee Chair, Pegasus Professor, and Distinguished Professor. During his tenure, he was also the founding director of the Institute for the Frontier of Attosecond Science and Technology (iFAST). In 2024, Dr. Chang was appointed as a Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) at the University of Ottawa. He is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society (APS) and Optica (formerly OSA).
Kevin Kubarych
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences
New Dimensions in Chemical Reactivity: Ultrafast Infrared Spectroscopy for Photo and Electrocatalysis
Summary
Two‑dimensional infrared (2D‑IR) spectroscopy is an ultrafast laser technique that builds upon traditional infrared spectroscopy by operating in multiple frequency dimensions, providing direct insight into molecular vibrations, chemical bonding, and transient structural changes during reactions. These capabilities make it possible to disentangle overlapping signals and observe how molecular structures evolve on ultrafast timescales.
With our newly built two‑dimensional infrared spectrometer, we are in an exciting position to shed new light on in situ chemical reactivity in contexts ranging from photo‑ and electrocatalysis to quantum materials and biophysics. I will briefly summarize the motivation and applications of 2D‑IR spectroscopy in chemistry and highlight new opportunities for collaboration and future directions.
Biography
I was an undergraduate at Brown University, followed by a PhD at University of Toronto working with Dwayne Miller on developing multidimensional Raman spectroscopy. I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Optics and Biosciences at Ecole Polytechnique in France developing new methods in 2D-IR spectroscopy. For 19 years I was a professor of chemistry at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where I worked with my group to extend the applications of 2D-IR spectroscopy to fundamental challenges in physical chemistry, as well as biomolecular hydration dynamics, photo and electrocatalysis, and charge transfer. In July 2024 I moved my labs to uOttawa for the next phase of science exploration, with a driving motivation of establishing ultrafast multidimensional optical spectroscopy as a powerful and general tool in chemical research.
Jennifer Ogilvie
Professor, Department of Physics
Multidimensional Snapshots of Light Harvesting
Summary
Coherent multidimensional spectroscopies (CMDS) are advanced ultrafast laser techniques that extend concepts from nuclear magnetic resonance into the optical domain, enabling the correlation of multiple light–matter interactions in both time and frequency. CMDS have been applied to a wide range of condensed‑phase systems, revealing the life‑sustaining structural rearrangements of liquid water, ultrafast energy conversion in photosynthesis, protein folding pathways, and many‑body interactions in semiconductors, while disentangling overlapping dynamical processes to provide a more complete picture of energy flow.
Both high temporal and spectral resolution can be achieved using Fourier‑transform CMDS, providing a significant advantage over lower‑dimensional approaches such as pump–probe spectroscopy. I will discuss our recent work in developing high‑sensitivity CMDS approaches compatible with imaging, our push to implement hyperspectral CMDS spanning 300 nm–1 µm, and applications to studies of ultrafast energy transfer and charge separation in natural and artificial light‑harvesting materials, including the potential to gain new insight into quantum materials.
Biography
Jennifer P. Ogilvie is a Professor of Physics at the University of Ottawa. She received her B.Sc. from the University of Waterloo, her M.Sc. degree from Simon Fraser University, Canada, and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Toronto, Canada. She was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory for Optics and Biosciences at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. She began her independent career at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2005, and moved to the University of Ottawa in 2024. Ogilvie’s group develops coherent multidimensional spectroscopies and imaging methods and applies them to a wide range of biological and condensed phase systems. She is a Sloan Fellow and an Optica Fellow.