2016-17 Funded SRG Abstracts

Irene Lusztig
Associate Professor
Arts Division
Film and Digital Media
2016-17 Special Research Grant 
Award: $8000

Yours in Sisterhood

YOURS IN SISTERHOOD is a performative, participatory documentary project based on a fascinating and under-studied cultural archive of published and unpublished letters to the editor of Ms. magazine (1972-80), archived in the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. My project is created through a series of filming trips across the US: In the communities where the original letters were written, I have been filming encounters with strangers whom I invite to create spontaneous performative readings of individual letters as well as to respond to the tone, language, and content of their chosen letter. My methodology is grounded in feminist theory that argues that the staging of conversations about the conditions of everyday life can in itself be a radical political act; the performative reading process is an invitation to project participants and audiences alike to enter into dynamic and complex engagements with these historical texts. 

I am interested in the power of re-speaking, embodiment, and reenactment to create a complex, real-time, affective space of responding to the feminist past. What might be revealed in the slippery space of inviting strangers to act out and respond to 1970s feminism in 2016? How might we re-engage or learn from the complex and unresolved legacies of 70s US feminism? What happens to these texts as they move from one kind of public discourse space (the once-vital, now obsolescent printed letter to the editor) to another (the urban and rural streets where I will encounter my interlocutors, or the Internet, where my finished project will encounter a viewing public)? And how might these letters create a space for viewers to reassess the status of public feminism today?

Kristina Lyons
Assistant Professor
Humanities Division
Feminist Studies
2016-17 Special Research Grant 
Award: $7950

Comparative Research on Transformative Agro-Environmental Politics in Colombia and Turkey

This project entails intensive language training and preliminary fieldwork in Turkey and continued fieldwork in Colombia to begin conceptualizing a comparative research project between Latin America and the Middle East. I draw on my extensive research in Latin America over the last fifteen years – especially in Colombia – to pose comparative questions at the intersection between militarization, peace-building, agro-environmental alternatives, and agrarian-based political processes in both Turkey and Colombia. While the sixty-year war between leftist guerrillas and the Colombian state has begun to deescalate and a peace accord is likely to be signed, militarization in Turkey is intensifying after the Turkish government abandoned the national peace process with the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) in the summer 2015. Farmers in Colombia’s western Amazon who are the protagonists of my current book project struggle to implement a popular-designed rural life plan that would recover regional food autonomy, and replace extractive-based state development policies with Amazonian agro-ecological livelihoods. Not unlike these farmers, the Kurdish Liberation Movement and their allies in Turkey strive to enact alternative social models of democratic autonomy and ecological sustainability at municipal and neighborhood levels. I learned that environmental and agrarian activists in Turkey look to Latin America for historical examples of successful rural social mobilization. Interestingly, farmers in Putumayo have begun to circulate statements in solidarity with pro-Kurdish civilian organizations in southeastern Turkey – an area that forms part of Kurdistan. In this project, I will explore the emergent alliances and comparative practices between popular movements in Colombia and Turkey to ask broader questions about the connections between contemporary agrarian imaginaries and proposals, and environmental struggles across Latin America and the Middle East. 

Jin Zhang
Professor
Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Chemistry and Biochemistry
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $6500

Photothermal Therapy (PTT) of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma through Specific Targeting of Cell Nucleus

We have previously demonstrated successfully that hollow gold nanospheres (HGNs) can be used for photothermal therapy (PTT) of cancer both in vitro and in vivo. We have made good progress in two directions: 1) controlled and reproducible synthesis of near IR (NIR) absorbing HGNs desired for PTT in a broad range of sizes (20-150 nm, compared to 30-50 nm previously); 2) comparison of peptide and antibody proteins as bioconjugation ligands, with preliminary results showing the peptide being more effective for PTT of oral cancer cells in vitro. 

In this work, we propose to expand our research on HGNs by comparing two specific targeting strategies for HGN-mediated PTT of oral squamous cell carcinoma (A431): 1. Targeting HGNs to the A431 cytoplasm with RGD peptides and 2. Targeting HGNs specifically to A431 cell nuclei with a combination of RGD and NLS peptides. We will confirm cellular location of HGNs using confocal microscopy and fluorescent labeling of the cell nuclei and membranes. After confirmation of desired cellular locations, we will assess in vitro differences in the efficacy of PTT treatment between these two approaches. We will also investigate the extent of damage to the cell membrane and nucleus (both physical damage and DNA damage) for each approach post treatment to determine how cell death progresses and how this differs depending on targeting strategy. 

Elaine Sullivan
Assistant Professor
Humanities Division
History
2016-17 Special Research Grant 
Award: $8000

3D Saqqara: reconstructing landscape and meaning at an ancient Egyptian site

The integration of GIS and 3D modeling now allows for the recreation and visualization of entire ancient landscapes. 3D Saqqara uses these digital capabilities to create a four-dimensional exploration of the cemetery of Saqqara (Egypt). By simulating the original built and natural landscape of the site over time, the project demonstrates how the nexus between landscape, memory and identity can be examined in innovative ways. Four-dimensional visualizations of ancient places allow scholars to question how the transformation of such places over time effected peoples' interpretation and memories of these spaces.

Yat Li
Associate Professor
Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Chemistry and Biochemistry
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $8000

Self-Sustained Microbial Photochemical Systems for Wastewater-to-Chemical Fuel Conversion

The goal of this proposal is to develop a proof-of-concept microbial photochemical system (MPS) that can dispose soluble organic wastes in wastewater and simultaneously recover the “wasted energy” stored in the organic compounds for photochemical generation of chemical fuels such as hydrogen gas. We will explore a fundamentally new MPS architecture, namely “Z-scheme” MPS, where a photoanode colonized with electrogenic bacteria (electron producing bacteria) is interfaced with a semiconductor photocathode. The MPS enables the utilization of solar energy to facilitate the microbial electrohydrogenesis process. Importantly, the proposed Z-scheme MPS can be fabricated in the form of a self-supporting film. The success of this project will demonstrate chemical fuel generation in a sustainable manner by suspending a free-standing Z-scheme MPS in municipal wastewater under natural sunlight illumination.

Evgenij Raskatov
Assistant Professor
Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Chemistry and Biochemistry
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $8000

Evaluation of Neurotoxicity of a Novel Synthetic Variant of Alzheimer’s Amyloid Beta Polypeptide in Cell-Based Models

Amyloid beta misfolding and aggregation is a hallmark feature of Alzheimer's Disease. Over the last decade, oligomeric assemblies of the polypeptide have emerged as particularly toxic aggregates. Because those oligomers can have a wide size range, the understanding of their individual contributions to the overall toxic profile of Amyloid beta remains a fundamental challenge to the field. We have created a unique variant of the Amyloid beta polypeptide, which allows to kinetically trap an advanced stage pre-fibrillary intermediate. The aim of this project is to determine the neurotoxicity, associated with this version and compare it with the normal (wildtype) Amyloid beta sequence. In order to do this, we need to optimize our preparative methodology, so as to yield higher quantities of the peptide. We will first test the synthetic scaffolds in the PC12 cell line, which is a widely accepted model system to measure Amyloid beta neurotoxicity. We will subsequently extend our investigation to primary mouse cortical neurons, which is a more advanced and disease-relevant model system. Results obtained will be used as preliminary data to apply for an NIH R01 grant.

Seth Rubin
Associate Professor
Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Chemistry and Biochemistry
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $7820

Chemical Inhibition of Vibrio Cholerae Polysaccharide Synthesis

Cholera remains a significant public health problem throughout the world. Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which is a human pathogen and a natural inhabitant of aquatic environments. One key factor for V. cholerae’s environmental survival, as well as its infectivity and transmission to the human host, is the microbe’s ability to form matrix-enclosed, surface-associated communities known as biofilms. A major component of the V. cholerae biofilm matrix is the VPS (Vibrio polysaccharide), which is essential for biofilm formation. We propose to develop new antimicrobials against V. cholerae that target proteins responsible for production of VPS. We will optimize an inhibitor assay for the VpsO kinase and VpsU phosphatase. Both enzymes are both necessary for proper biofilm formation and likely signal for an increase in VPS production and biofilm formation. We will then use the assays to perform a high-throughput chemical screen in the UCSC Chemical Screening Center. This project, a collaboration between three laboratories in Physical and Biological Sciences, will generate much needed preliminary data to secure future NIH funding.

Flora Lu
Associate Professor
Social Sciences Division
Environmental Studies
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $7400

Refined Reflections: Exchanging Experiences about Living with Oil in Ecuador and the US

This project proposes a cross-hemispheric exchange that brings together residents from communities in close proximity to oil refineries in both the Global North (North Richmond, CA) and the Global South (Esmeraldas, Ecuador). Though Esmeraldas and North Richmond belong to distinct oil networks (with different historical trajectories and regulatory forms of oil governance), they entangle similar actors, power relations, and exposures to hazards. For example, after the August 6, 2012 fires in the Chevron refinery, which caused 15,000 people to seek medical attention for respiratory ailments, Ecuadorians bought a full-page ad in local CA papers expressing their solidarity with the people of Richmond. Funding is requested to bring two North Richmond residents to Ecuador, where my collaborator and I recently completed a research project exploring the daily, lived experience with oil. Using participatory mapping and photographic methods, focus groups, and story telling workshops, the project will investigate similarities and differences in the repercussions of oil, coping strategies and forms of meaning-making among these afflicted populations. The lessons learned from the exchange will be shared with the broader Esmeraldas community through a public event and will be incorporated into a revised proposal to the National Science Foundation to fund further research in North Richmond comparable to that already collected in Esmeraldas.

Lars Fehren-Schmitz
Assistant Professor
Social Sciences Division
Anthropology
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $7856

The Black Death in Africa: A paleogenomic study of global disease transfer and cross-cultural interactions

At least three plague pandemics ravaged the world in the last two millennia killing millions of people. Only the last pandemic of the 19th century is well documented in sub-Saharan Africa while the older pandemics are absent from the historiography of Africa. Is it possible that sub-Saharan Africa was so disconnected from the rest of the world during these periods? This proposal aims to contribute to the discussion if and to what extend sub-Saharan Africa was integrated into the global networks of exchange before the onsets of Slave Trade and Colonialism by detecting and studying the genetic diversity of the disease agent causing plague, Yersinia pestis, in prehistoric human remains from Western African burial contexts associated with disease induced mass mortality. Plague spread mainly through human agency, through the movement of goods and people. If we are able to detect plague in the ancient human remains using state of the art methods of Paleogenomic research this would be a direct indicator of cross cultural contact between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world. Beyond that it would be also become possible to date these interactions and by contextualizing the genomic data with the historical and archaeological record to understand the nature of these connections. By studying disease hereby we could learn about the history and extend of global human interactions.

Mayanthi Fernando
Associate Professor
Social Sciences Division
Anthropology
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $8000

Regulating Intimacy: The Secular Governance of Sex/Religion

This project examines the relationship between the public/private distinction so central to secular-liberal democracy and the secular state’s simultaneous regulation of sexuality and religion, both considered to be deeply private, even intimate, realms. Using the management of Muslims in colonial and post-colonial France as a case study, I inquire into the nexus of sex and religion in the articulation of modern secularity, analyzing how the secular state’s project of regulating and transforming religious life is interwoven with its project of sexual normalization, i.e. its attempts to produce secular, sexually “normal” immigrants and citizens. I propose not only that the regulation of sex and religion are parallel phenomena – underpinned by the state’s competing imperatives to render private and to scrutinize – but also that these modes of regulation intertwine: proper religion and proper sex are mutually constituted via secular governance. I am further interested in how foundational the sexed and gendered body has become to discourses and practices of French secularity. Rather than merely a political formation guaranteeing state neutrality, secularity – like religion – is also a site of norms, affects, emotions, embodied dispositions, and ethical sensibilities, and it needs to be examined as such. In taking up the always-shifting boundary between public and private in the state’s regulation of Muslim immigrants and citizens, my project therefore attends to what I call the sexual protocols of secularity, and to the sexed/gendered configuration of the sensibilities, bodily dispositions, affects, and norms that underpin French secularity. 

While the project has multiple research nodes (including inquiries into religious discrimination case law, colonial family law, and mosque architecture in French cities), the first phase considers the contemporary regulation of immigrant/migrant marriages. 

Judith Habicht-Mauche
Professor
Social Sciences Division
Anthropology
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $6770

Tracing Pueblo IV Social Networks through Glaze-Paint Communities of Practice in the Upper Little Colorado and Western Zuni Regions of the American Southwest

This NSF-funded collaborative project, involving archaeologists at University of California, Santa Cruz and Washington State University, uses a variety of analytical techniques to chemically characterize “recipes” and the source of raw materials (lead ores) used to prepare glaze paints applied to pottery manufactured at late Prehispanic (ca. A.D. 1275-1400) sites in east-central Arizona and west-central New Mexico. The project will analyze pottery paste composition using optical mineralogy, chemically characterize glaze-paint composition using LA-ICP-MS and isotopically source lead in glaze paint using dissolution ICP-MS. The resulting data will be incorporated into a larger glaze-paint database and relationships among composition and source will be evaluated using Social Network Analysis methods. Thus, data from the Upper Little Colorado and western Zuni regions will help to complete our increasingly macroregional understanding of this technology and its associated raw materials, permitting exploration of how social networks facilitated the exchange of technical information and migration, and served as arenas of social production that transformed late precontact period social groups in the American Southwest. Thus, this project will enhance our understanding of the culture history of the American Southwest, while also making broader intellectual contributions to anthropological studies of diasporic migration and the anthropology of technology. COR funding would supplement existing NSF support for this project and would be used specifically to hire a graduate student in Archaeology Ph.D. program as a summer GSR to assist with preparation and analysis of petrographic thin sections and LA-ICP-MS characterization of ceramic glaze-paint compositions. 

Rebecca Covarrubias
Assistant Professor
Social Sciences Division
Psychology
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $8000

Observing the daily cultural environments of working-class college students

Working-class college students often confront cultural mismatches between the environments of their interdependent, working-class homes and of independent, middle-class universities. Consequently, these cultural mismatches hinder well-being (Covarrubias & Fryberg, 2015) and performance (Stephens, Fryberg, et al., 2012) for working-class college students. Past work documents this mismatch through various methodological approaches (e.g., interviews, self-reports, experiments). However, work has yet to capture the in-the-moment daily experiences and social settings of working-class students as they transition into the middle-class college environment. The proposed project extends prior work by utilizing an innovative methodological approach, the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)—a device that samples behavioral data acoustically (Mehl & Robbins, 2012)—to directly measure the daily lives of working-class college students as they naturally unfold. One hundred undergraduate students (50 working-class, 50 middle-class) will be recruited to wear the EAR for a total of 4 days (2 days in school, 2 days at home). Data will be coded for conversations, activities, and behaviors that align with independence (e.g., speaking out in class, independent work, questioning rules) and with interdependence (e.g., collaborative work, obeying commands, time spent with family), and coded for markers of student well-being (e.g., negative and positive emotion expression). We expect that, compared to middle-class college students, working-class college students will engage in more interdependent social environments, creating a cultural mismatch with the independent university context. The findings from the proposed work will contribute, both theoretically and methodologically, to the literature regarding the cultural experiences of working-class college students, and will help inform strategies for improving their daily experiences (e.g., belonging, performance). 

Manel Camps
Associate Professor
Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $8000

Identification of fitness landscape of extended spectrum beta-lactamase

Beta-lactamase is the gene that confers resistance to penicillin through breakdown of its beta-lactam ring. This gene can also confer resistance to other beta-lactam antibiotics (aztreonam, 3rd and 4th generation cephalosporins, and monobactams) through the acquisition of mutations that enlarge its active site. These variants are known as Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase (ESBL) mutants and have become a serious public health problem for the treatment of extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC) and other enteric bacteria. 

ESBL mutations are extremely interesting as a model for understanding how proteins evolve new activities. Typically, multiple mutations are involved and only a few "winners" are actually seen in natural evolution. Here we propose a comprehensive survey of possible paths to ESBL resistance. We will create a random mutant library of beta-lactamase, select this library through treatment of the bacterial population expressing the library with a cephalosporin, and sequence the beta-lactamase gene from the selected library by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). NGS sequencing produces millions of reads, and therefore should identify the genetic diversity present in the beta-lactamase gene before and after selection with a high level of resolution. The selection will be mild to preserve some genetic diversity. By comparing the representation of individual mutants before and after selection, we should be able to ascribe a fitness value to a large number of mutants. This information will be visualized using a "fitness landscape" representation, allowing the identification of areas of sequence space that play major roles in the development of ESBL resistance and areas that are not accessible to evolution. This knowledge has important basic and translational implications. It will help understand the rules that govern functional interplays between mutations and it will facilitate the rational design of therapeutic regimens aimed at delaying resistance .

Andrew Mathews
Associate Professor
Social Sciences Division
Anthropology
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $7000

How historical ecology and anthropology can inform predictions about the futures of Italian Forests

Global environmental change is one of the gravest problems facing governments and citizens around the world. Research on why people accept the futures produced by climate change models has shown that quantitative models that are not contextualized in local understandings of the landscape face great difficulty in being accepted by the general public. Previous research by the author has shown that people in central Italy see the management of forests, terraces, and drainage systems as a key way to prevent floods and landslides, and that they have a traditional language for describing appropriate forms of trees and managed forests. These concerns have not been taken into account in ecological models and official policies which assume undisturbed forests, and which are concerned with the carbon stored in forests that might be available for biomass energy production. This project will use historical and anthropological research on the long past of human modified landscapes in Italy to broaden the range of futures explored by ecological modelers, policymakers, and citizens who seek to predict and respond to climate change. Site visits with ecological modelers and landowner interviews will be used to produce historical accounts of landscape change that give rise to multiple scenarios of carbon absorbed by human impacted forests in Tuscany, Italy. Site visits to urban/suburban forest areas will be used to characterize the forms of trees, how people assess well and poorly managed trees at urban/rural interfaces, and how urban citizens’ concerns about tree management affect their acceptance of, or hostility to, biomass energy policies which seek to reduce carbon emissions. An interactive web page will be used to compare responses to scenarios of carbon storage which incorporate local knowledge of tree care, with those that are based upon official scenarios

Renee Fox
Assistant Professor
Humanities Division
Literature
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $8000

Queer Revivals: Female Intimacy and Alternative History in Nineteenth-Century Irish Fiction

Queer Revivals argues that portrayals of queer femininity in nineteenth-century Irish fiction were often avenues for writers to re-imagine Irish literary and political history. There has been an explosion of interest in recent years among critics and writers alike in considering the ways that queer theory might help unearth alternative narratives of Irish history and culture that have been suppressed by both nationalist and revisionist Irish conservatisms. Much of this interest has been devoted to rethinking narrow definitions of Irish masculinity and to imagining queer male relationships productively breaching an oppressively heterosexual Catholic culture. Queer femininity, however, particularly in texts written before the term “lesbian” came into common use in the early twentieth century, has received far less attention, and Queer Revivals will fill this critical void, as well as expand the optimistic potential of theorizing queerness within Irish studies. Queer Revivals argues that because feminine intimacies in the nineteenth century were less legally circumscribed and negatively categorized than male intimacies, male and female Irish novelists alike used queer relationships between women to imagine viable alternatives to the strict narratives of historical progress and literary development that Irish conservatism demanded. The book will stand as a corrective to the proclivity of Irish studies scholars to focus on contemporary queer masculinity instead of queer femininity as a nodal point of Irish literary radicalism. In service of this aim, each individual chapter will fundamentally re-evaluate critical approaches to canonical nineteenth-century Irish writers—like Bram Stoker, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, and Emily Lawless—whose fictional portrayals of queer feminine relationships have habitually been ignored. 

Benjamin Breen
Assistant Professor
Humanities Division
History
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $3428

Tropical Transplantations: Drugs, Nature, & Globalization in the Early Modern World, 1640-1800

Global drug cartels and multinational pharmaceutical companies rank among the most powerful commercial enterprises on the planet. Yet we know surprisingly little about the historical origins of the modern drug trade. This project is the first scholarly monograph on the drug trade in the early modern world. By utilizing little-studied texts relating to imperial networks of healers, drug merchants, natural philosophers, and laborers in West Central Africa, South America, South Asia, and Europe, “Tropical Transplantations” radically revises current understandings of the history of drugs, pharmacy, and ethnobotany. 

I argue that early modern (c. 1500-1800) debates over so-called "Indies" drugs such as coffee, opium, cinchona bark, guaiacum, bezoar stones, tobacco, and tea led to the emergence of cross-cultural theories of bodily and mental health that integrated Western, African, Asian, and indigenous American knowledge traditions. This, in turn, influenced the rise of experimental medicine in the 17th and 18th centuries. Likewise, in the Portuguese tropics in particular, indigenous American, African, and Asian healers emerged as powerful mediators of pharmaceutical expertise, even as they became forcibly embedded in global systems of labor that revolved around the commercialization and fetishization of non-European knowledge. 

Wendy (Dee) Hibbert-Jones
Associate Professor
Arts Division
Art
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $8000

Untitled: (interactive proposal)

This COR application is a request to fund an interactive, online animated web series that explores America’s most cherished notions of justice and fairness. The interactive project (untitled) asks how do the social and judicial systems we live under reflect our most dearly held beliefs? Based on the premise that most U.S. citizens see their country as free and just, and yet on a case-by-case basis so often feel “the system” has failed us. 

The project is comprised of a series of 17-25 minute animated stories which explore the question of justice through the eyes of individuals who have been directly impacted by a criminal act, an injustice or a situation that raises core questions about the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of our system. 

The project comes out of my most recent short film: Last Day of Freedom, a 32 minute animated film currently nominated for an Academy Award. This grant is a request to fund research into an interactive online web platform. The project begins with testimonies from individuals impacted by the death penalty, the most extreme form of punishment within our judicial system, and branches out to include multiple stories from individuals impacted by the criminal justice system. Additional themes we are currently considering are: the ethics of punishment, reconciliation and forgiveness versus harsh punishment; racial profiling, the right to safety and geographic disparity. 

Each theme begins with the stories of those directly impacted. As users navigate stories, they explore perspectives and understand factual details to reveal a nuanced and complex picture of our criminal justice system. Storytellers are animated to protect anonymity and creatively explore metaphors across themes. We are exploring the idea of including additional commentary from scholars, victims’ families, wardens and professionals to broaden perspectives. We are working with advisors in the fields of law, history, race politics and jurisprudence.

Alexander Ayzner
Assistant Professor
Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Chemistry and Biochemistry
2016-17 Special Research Grant
Award: $6500

Organic Light-Harvesting Antennae: From Quantum Spaghetti to Soft, One-Dimensional Electronic Wires

With the goal of constructing a modular artificial photosystem using soft materials, we are working on self-assembly of oppositely-charged semiconducting polymers in the most environmentally-benign solvent: water. These semiconducting polyelectrolytes are remarkable materials, whose electronic and optical properties are very strongly coupled to the physical structure of the polymer chains. The physical structure is in turn strongly dependent on the local electric field, providing us the ability to sensitively tune the optoelectronic properties of these long-chain molecules with simple or complex salts. We have recently discovered that when two oppositely-charged semiconducting polyelectrolytes form a complex, with each polymer acting like one side of a hypothetical zipper, the optical properties of these water-soluble polymers undergo dramatic changes. We found that the electronic excited states of the polyelectrolytes that dictate their light-emitting efficiency change from being delocalized over long one-dimensional quantum wires to being collapsed to spaghetti-like coils. This leads to a concomitant change in the light emission quantum yield by several orders of magnitude. However, room temperature luminescence experiments are wholly insufficient to gain a full understanding of the precise nature of the photoexcited electronic wavefunction. To understand how to use the environment to control the polyelectrolyte excited state character and their associated energy transfer dynamics, we must measure the magnitudes of the quantum-mechanical interactions that determine the nature of the excited states. There exists a single method of doing so: temperature-dependent fluorescence. We propose to use funds from this SRG to purchase an add-on to the spectrometer currently in the Ayzner lab to allow us to measure the evolution of fluorescence spectra as a function of temperature.