The La Pierre Group

Max grew up in Seal Beach, California, from where he traveled up the coast to study Chemistry at UC Berkeley. There he studied NHC scaffolded titanium imido complexes with Prof. John Arnold, who convinced him to move back down the coast to obtain his Ph.D. from UC San Diego. Working with Prof. Jeffrey Rinehart, he used the synthetic unit consisting of tricationic erbium bound to the cyclooctatetraene dianion to direct intramolecular dipolar magnetic fields and investigate the effect of the resulting magnetoenergy structure on long-timescale slow magnetic relaxation. He is currently investigating the effect of magnetovibronic coupling on coherence in heavy f- and d-element molecular qubit candidates.