Joe DuChene is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, where his group designs and creates nanostructured catalysts capable of sustainably synthesizing fuels and chemicals from readily abundant small molecules. Prior to joining UMass Amherst, Joe was a postdoctoral scholar in the group of Professor Harry Atwater at the California Institute of Technology. Working with the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Caltech, he conducted fundamental studies on the energy distributions and ultrafast dynamics of plasmonic hot carriers in metal nanostructures and pioneered new plasmonic devices for enhancing the selectivity of photoelectrochemical CO₂ reduction. Joe obtained his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Florida in the group of Professor W. David Wei. His Ph.D. dissertation involved the development of in situ electrochemical and spectroscopic techniques for monitoring charge-carrier dynamics in metal-semiconductor heterostructures and the creation of plasmonic photoelectrochemical cells for solar-to-fuel energy conversion.