About

JEFF YARGER – My primary role in the Yarger Research Group (YargerLab) is as a Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics at Arizona State University in the School of Molecular Sciences. My primary research interests are in biophysical chemistry, nano-materials, biopolymers and the general field of disordered or amorphous materials. After receiving my undergraduate degrees in 1991 from the University of Arizona, I then worked at DuPont-Merck for year before returning to Arizona to complete his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Arizona State University in 1996. I continued his education as a US National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Chemical Physics Group within the laboratories of Professor Alexander Pines and Professor Paul Alivisatos from 1996 until 1998. In 1998, I joined the University of Wyoming as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry with an adjunct appointment at Colorado State University as an Assistant Professor of Physics. I also joined Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) as a visiting scientist, a position he still holds with collaborations, personnel and labs being maintained at ANL. I was promoted to Associate Professor and Senior Scientist status in 2001 at the University of Wyoming and Argonne National Laboratories, respectively. In 2005, I moved back to Arizona State University (ASU) where I is currently a Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry in the School of Molecular Sciences (SMS) and is the founding and current director of the Magnetic Resonance Research Center (MRRC). My current research interests include (i) Fundamental Structural and Dynamical Characterization of Amorphous Materials with an Emphasis on Biopolymer (i.e., spider silk), Amorphous Pharmaceuticals and Polyamorphic Systems; (ii) Development of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Neutron Scattering, Brillouin Scattering, Vibrational Spectroscopy and Calorimetric techniques to better characterize amorphous materials; (iii) Synthesis and molecular level characterization of nano-materials and nano-composites; (iv) The applications of amorphous materials and molecular level characterization techniques to biomedical instruments and human health; (v) Materials under extreme conditions; (vi) Decentralized Applications, Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies and Quantum Cryptography, (vii) Quantum Computers, (viii) Cannabinoids & the Endocannabinoid System, (viii) Information Theory and Data Science, and (ix) ‘Spin’ (intrinsic angular momentum) and its fundamental connection to matter and light.