Munira Khalil is an American chemist who is the Leon C. Johnson Professor of Chemistry and department chair at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

Early life and education

Khalil attended Colgate University, where she majored in chemistry and English and was a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

. She moved to the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

for doctoral research, where she developed coherent

two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy Two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy (2D IR) is a nonlinear infrared spectroscopy technique that has the ability to correlate vibrational modes in condensed-phase systems. This technique provides information beyond linear infrared spectra, by spr ...

to study the molecular structure of coupled vibrations on a picosecond timescale. Khalil moved to the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

as a postdoctoral researcher, where she was made a Miller Fellow.

Research and career

In 2007, Khalili joined the

. Her research makes use of ultrafast spectroscopies to understand the structural dynamics of molecules. Photoinduced charge transfer depends on an interplay between atomic and electronic processes on multi-dimensional energy surfaces. She develops 3D electronic-vibrational femtosecond spectroscopies to understand vibrational and electronics motions on femtosecond timescales. In particular, she is interested in how solvents (e.g. water in photosynthesis) impact the electron transfer processes. Khalil was made chair of the department of chemistry in 2020.

Awards and honors

* 2007 Dreyfus New Faculty Award * 2008 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering * 2009

National Science Foundation CAREER Award The National Science Foundation CAREER awards, presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF), are in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and education, and the integration of these endeavors i ...

* 2011 Chinese-American Kavli Frontiers of Science symposium * 2012

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

* 2013 Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award * 2014 Journal of Physical Chemistry Lectureship * 2011 Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow * 2017 American Physical Society Fellow * 2021 Elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences * 2022 Joe W. and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation Brown Investigator Awards

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khalil, Munira Living people University of Washington faculty 21st-century American chemists Colgate University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology people University of California, Berkeley people Fellows of the American Physical Society Sloan Research Fellows Spectroscopists American women chemists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women scientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni