Tom Ugras

A Route to Pure Optical Rotation in Self-Assembled Materials through Energetic Non-Degeneracy Daniel J. Gracias, Thomas J. Ugras, Richard D. Robinson arxiv.org/abs/2603.15938 [𝚙𝚑𝚢𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚜.𝚘𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚜 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍-𝚖𝚊𝚝.𝚖𝚎𝚜-𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍-𝚖𝚊𝚝.𝚖𝚝𝚛𝚕-𝚜𝚌𝚒]

Happy Friday! @LyssiotisLab and I had a fun time hyping up our favorite metabolite Uridine as the Metabolite of the Month in @CellCellPress! We hope you enjoy this quick read! cell.com/trends/endocri…

Better late than never, happy to help with this one !

Transforming achiral semiconductors into chiral domains with exceptional circular dichroism in @ScienceMagazine science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Last week, @tomugras (@RRobinson_ITH group) from @Cornell analysed Nanocluster films at @b23_diamond, @DiamondLightSou using our MMP facility. #chirality #films #MaterialsScience

Wrapped up another successful run at @b23_diamond ! Quick pass through London too for the football and the food - thanks for the tour of UCL Chemistry @_AishaMumtaz_ 🧬🧪⚛️

@Origami_Alice jack of all trades !

There's seriously no focus. (Spoiler: my forth is going to be on magnetic nanoparticles, which doesn't help...😅) Not to mention my first master's was in X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy, so that was a thing. Aaaaah Alice find something to settle down in already😆

Okay, so my first publication was on origami theory, my second was on magnetic self-assembly, and now my third's on liquid crystals! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100… I... What am I? I must have missed something about specializing during my PhD... 😅

@WeiYouResearch @ChoiseEfrc Nice combo of CD + X-ray studies to reveal LDLB origins !

Giant CD! Took us a long time to finish, but great work with @ChoiseEfrc ! Thanks to Dr. Yan, a research assistant professor in our lab! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100…

(Dr.) Frank’s last day in the office ! Congrats my friend, you’ve done so great and taught the team so much. Check out our first paper together - he says it was his favorite work throughout his PhD :) pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac… We’ll miss you dearly !

everything is really just a mass on a spring, isn’t it ?

@_AishaMumtaz_ @Cornell @scanlond81 Great to meet you - safe travels back and hope to see you soon ! 🌀🐚😵‍💫🐌

All in all a really spectacular conference that I'm so grateful to have been a part of. Met lots of wonderful people especially @tomugras and generally anyone from @Cornell I happened to bump into 😆 thanks as well to @scanlond81 for being my adopted supervisor for the week 😆

Had an absolute blast at #F23MRS!! My first MRS but also first international conference and first time in the USA....lots of firsts for me 😅 1/x

Feels good to have the talks over with-been great to meet so many scientists whom I look up to, too !

@mvkovalenko Lovely group photo ! 😉 Good to meet you Prof Kovalenko!

Thanks to @JDislistening and the REACT team. And of course @jesswade for the inspiration - took a lot of elements from the chiral team over at Imperial ! And @gimmecoffee for the chiral pastries !

Summer outreach day with Cornell’s REACT(sites.coecis.cornell.edu/react/)! Fun with chirality and cross-polarization: R/S-carvone, helical sugar molecules, and strain-induced birefringence (“pastarimeter” not pictured!).

@Origami_Alice Yes Alice you are cool ! 😁

Also — For people that knew me pre-covid, was I this happy? Is this a “I’m returning to my pre-covid self” or is this a new state?… Being in my 20s has been a weird and wild experience.

Look at that stupid smile~ Lots of people have recently told me that I’m very energetic, smile a lot, or laugh too much, and I’ve been wondering why. I’ve been oddly in peace with myself these days… I still hate Alice and am frustrated by her, but, like, she’s cool, ya know?

Can we still measure CD with CD spectrometers? Highly anisotropic nanostructures can cause problems, as artifacts appear in the circular dichroism spectrum that can’t be removed. More info in our new paper: doi.org/10.1002/chir.2…

.@tomugras (@RRobinson_ITH group) from @Cornell visited @DiamondLightSou last week to study Nanocluster Films. #chirality #films #MaterialsScience

A fitting friend to find as I wrapped up my beamtime at @b23_diamond late last night ! Was a lot of fun, and the data is just amazing 🐚😵‍💫🧬

This week marks the 20 year anniversary of the unjustified, US-led invasion of Iraq. Millions of lives lost and harmed, one of the greatest crimes humanity has ever seen. Weighs heavy on the mind as Russia does the same.