Dr. Justin Henthorn received his BSc in Chemistry from Ohio University in 2010, where he worked in the group of Prof. Jeffrey Rack exploring the photochemistry of transition metal-quantum dot assemblies. He subsequently received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue a PhD at the California Institute of Technology in the group of Prof. Theodor Agapie. During his PhD, Justin explored the multi-proton multi-electron chemistry of pi-bound Molybdenum-quinonoid complexes and developed expertise in rigorously air-free synthetic inorganic chemistry.
Upon completing his PhD in 2016, Justin moved to Germany to start a postdoc with Prof. Serena DeBeer at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, funded by an Alexander von Humbolt Research Fellowship. Justin’s main project focused on using X-ray spectroscopy as a selective probe of the local electronic structure in Se-substituted nitrogenase. He developed broad expertise in the areas of X-ray absorption and emission spectroscopies, Mössbauer spectroscopy, and computational analysis (DFT), while also continuing to strengthen his synthetic abilities. In 2021, Justin moved to the group of Dr. George E. Cutsail III and shifted focus to electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, working on projects related to biological copper systems and main-group radicals.
In 2024, Justin joined the School of Chemistry at UCD as a Lecturer/Assistant Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and a Royal Society – Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellow, establishing his independent research group.
Henthorn Research 