People

Prof. Lear was born in the state of California, earning a B.S. in biochemistry at UC Davis.  During that time, he worked for Prof. Andrew Fisher at UC Davis and Dr. James Tucker at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  He then earned his M.S. and Ph.D. at UC San Diego, under the mentorship of Prof. Clifford Kubiak. There he studied electron transfer in mixed valence complex formed from oxo-centered trinuclear ruthenium clusters. He then performed postdoctoral studies under the mentorship of the late Prof. Malcolm Chisholm at The Ohio State University, where he continued to study electron transfer in mixed valence systems, this time focusing on quadruply bonded Mo and W units. In 2010, he joined the faculty at Penn State, where his interests currently lie in understanding the interplay between nanoscale materials and their chemical environments.