Dezhang Chen

About

Chemistry, shaped by curiosity.

I work across colloidal synthesis, surface chemistry, and optoelectronic devices to understand—and design—how nanoscale materials interact with light.

I am a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, working in Liberato Manna’s group on perovskite nanoplatelet assemblies for polarized light emission.

My research has moved between emissive perovskite nanocrystals, metal chalcogenide quantum dots, chiral surface chemistry, and solar cells. Across these systems, I’m interested in a common question: how can synthetic and surface-level control unlock useful collective optical and electronic behavior?

I completed my Ph.D. in Chemistry at HKUST with Jonathan Halpert and my B.S. in Chemistry at UC Irvine. Along the way, I have held visiting research appointments at Brown and Yale.

Selected path

Research journey

  1. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

    MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow · Perovskite nanoplatelet assemblies

  2. HKUST

    Postdoctoral Research Fellow · Surface engineering and chiral nanocrystals

  3. Brown University

    Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar · High-entropy perovskites and core–shell nanocrystals

  4. HKUST

    Ph.D. in Chemistry · Nanocrystal LEDs, solar cells, and carrier dynamics

  5. UC Irvine

    B.S. in Chemistry · Undergraduate research in hybrid 2D perovskites