Patrick Connelly

Patrick Connelly is a 2020-2024 Self Graduate Fellow pursuing a Ph.D. in chemistry under Professor Misha Barybin. He earned baccalaureate degrees from the University of Kansas in chemistry (B.S., 2018), microbiology (B.S., 2018), linguistics (B.A. with honors, 2017), and Japanese language and literature (B.A. with honors, 2017). Connelly’s research in the Barybin group is ultimately motivated by the shrinking size of electronic components. Although they have reaped many benefits from making electronics smaller and smaller, such as increased efficiency and portability, they are also rapidly approaching a physical and economic limit to how small devices can be made using components of conventional silicon. In the Barybin group, they strive to design and synthesize small organic molecules that could potentially act as electronic components in place of bulk silicon. One of the molecules that were first synthesized in their lab have subsequently been used by other groups to build functional electronic components. This molecule was based on a framework we call 6,6'-biazulene; it is this framework that Connely studies in his projects currently. Connelly aims to learn more about how this system moves charge so that they can better understand how to use it to design and build the devices of the future.

Mentor: Mikhail Barybin, Professor, Department of Chemistry