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Alec Wodtke received his Ph.D. at U. C. Berkeley in 1986 where he was a winner of both a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and a 1985 American Chemical Society Graduate Fellowship. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Goettingen, Germany before joining the faculty at U.C.S.B.. Professor Wodtke is a winner of a 1989 Presidential Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award. Professor Wodtke was recently elected spokesperson for the Chemical Dynamics Beamline at the Advanced (synchrotron) Light Source in Berkeley.(805) 893-8085. Email: wodtke@chem.ucsb.edu
Professor Wodtke's group uses laser and molecular beam methods to study chemical reactions of quantum state selected molecules under single collision conditions. Stimulated emission pumping is employed to prepare highly vibrationally excited molecules in single quantum states and molecular beams are used to control the collision energy and reagent orientation prior to reaction. Particular emphasis is placed on problems in atmospheric chemistry, where it is now clear that highly energetic molecules can play an important role in stratospheric ozone chemistry.
Professor Wodtke is interested in how specific quantum-state selection of reagents can influence the outcome of a chemical reaction. For example if one excites HCN with the right lasers, one can prepare highly excited quantum states which "isomerize". That is, the wave function has probability amplitude for the HC N as well as the C NH structure. Professor Wodtke's group is trying to understand the unique chemistry of this and other similarly excited molecules. He is also investigating how highly vibrationally excited molecules react on clean single crystal surfaces. Students of Professor Wodtke therefor have an opportunity at state-of-the-art training in surface chemistry as well.
Another project is exploiting a new method invented in Professor Wodtke's laboratory, which allows the experimental determination of the scalar-pair product state distribution matrix in photochemistry. Professor Wodtke is also involved in the development and use of the new Chemical Dynamics Beamline at the Advanced Light Source Synchrotron facility at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. This beamline employs one endstation, which is the best universal crossed molecular beam machine presently available anywhere in the world. UCSB students will have the opportunity to use the instrument for there thesis work under the direction of Professor Wodtke.
