Yi Rao
College of Science
Chemistry and Biochemistry Department

Faculty Researcher of the Year 

Dr. Yi Rao obtained his PhD in 2003 under the supervision of Dr. Hong-fei Wang, at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science. In 2004, he joined Dr. Kenneth Eisenthal’s group at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow, in the area of experimental nonlinear interfacial spectroscopy. After his postdoc, Yi continued his career as a research associate, in collaboration with Drs. Nicholas Turro and Kenneth Eisenthal at Columbia University. Starting in 2014, Dr. Rao worked as a research associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at Temple University. He joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Utah State University as an assistant professor in 2017. His research interests focus on interfacial physical chemistry for environmental issues, solar energy conversion, and catalysis. Dr. Rao’s team has pioneered several state-of-the-art interface-specific nonlinear optical spectroscopies for structures and dynamics at different interfaces. Dr. Rao is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award.