The image below illustrates that the smiles in our department shine brighter than a thousand suns! All the models were asked to make serious faces a split second before the shots were taken. These images capture the spirit and joy of the departmental professional headshot session from September 2024.
Meet Ilia Guzei! Ilia is a distinguished scientist and the director of crystallography for the department. He holds a Ph.D. in organometallic chemistry from Wayne State University in Detroit and enjoys computational methods. He says, “Crystallography is a perfect combination of the two.” As a member of the Paul Bender Chemistry Instrument Center Ilia works on collaborative projects to establish crystal structures of a wide range of materials, trains students to use our state-of-the-art single and powder X-ray diffractometers, participates in teaching Chemical Crystallography 613, helps with crystallographic data publication and review, and serves on departmental and university committees. Ilia did his postdoctoral study at the University of Delaware and held a similar position to his current one at Iowa State University before joining the department in 2000. Before coming to the United States, he briefly worked in the USSR’s premier X-ray Structural Center where he co-authored the “first Russian fullerene structure” paper featuring (eta2-C60Fullerene)-bis(triphenylphosphino)-palladium(0). Outside of work, Ilia enjoys photography and exploring new destinations in the US and abroad.