Ben Cotts

Ben joined Middlebury College in Fall 2021 and is excited to begin teaching and working with students. After growing up in upstate NY, he is excited to return to the open space and rolling hills of the Northeast. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Carleton College in 2011 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from U.C. Berkeley in 2016. During his PhD he worked in Naomi Ginsberg’s lab on time-resolved spectroscopy of organic electronics as a function of their local environment. From 2017-2018 he worked as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) focused on international energy systems modeling and at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) focused on program and tech-to-market support. From 2018-2021 he worked as postdoctoral researcher in the Salleo Group in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University focused on photothermal spectroscopy of perovskite nanocrystals and time-resolved electron and x-ray diffraction of semiconductor nanocrystals. Ben enjoys cooking bread and stews, jogging, walking dogs, and drinking coffee.

Contact Ben via email or stop by BiHall 545 if you are interested in learning more about our work or joining the lab.