Tamar Seideman


Tamar Seideman is the Dow Chemical Company Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. She specialises in coherence spectroscopies and coherent control in isolated molecules, as well as nanoplasmonics and mathematical models.

Early life and education

Seideman was born in Israel. She studied chemistry at the Tel Aviv University and graduated suma cum laude with a bachelor's degree in 1982. She joined the Weizmann Institute of Science for her doctoral studies and earned her PhD under the supervision of Moshe Shapiro in 1990. Her doctoral work considered the quantum theory of laser catalysis. Seideman was made a Fulbright Program fellow at University of California, Berkeley. Here she worked with William H. Miller on theoretical chemistry. In 1992 she joined the Ames Research Center as a research fellow before being appointed a research associate at the National Research Council of Canada.

Research and career

Seideman was made an associate research officer at the National Research Council of Canada in 1996. She was cross-appointed as a professor of chemistry at Queen's University. Here she developed photoelectron angular distributions to study short pulse pump-probe scenarios. Seideman was made a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University in 2003. She was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship in 2004.
Seideman applies quantum mechanical methods and computational chemistry to understand current-induced dynamics in molecular electronic devices. She investigates both electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom, and understands electron transport using scattering spectroscopies. Seideman has explored coherent control, which can be used in semiconductor device technologies, gas-phase molecular dynamics and biology. She also shown that you can guide light using nanoparticle arrays to create custom nanoplasmonics. This has included laser alignment, which can impart long-range orientational order to molecular layers. In dense molecular assemblies, alignment can become a collective phenomenon with long range translational and orientational order. In polyatomic molecules alignment can be used to control torsional motions, which can impact charge transfer in solution and the solid-state. She proposed that this coherent control could be used to drive a molecular machine. Additionally she has demonstrated it is possible to use a scanning tunnelling microscope to control surface reactions.
Her recent work has developed theoretical and computational models to control the nanoscale properties of electronic devices. This has included an investigation in charge transport through molecular and nanoscale electronic materials in an effort to improve the efficiency of solar cells. In an effort to understand charge transport mechanisms, she has studied optically induced tunnelling through thesec materials. In 2011 she completed a visiting professor position at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Awards and honours

Her awards and honours include;
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