Jonathan Larson

Jonathan Larson

Affiliate
571-458-8349

Bio

Jonathan Larson received a B.S. degree in mathematics and physics from Longwood University in central Virginia where he played Division I basketball. After his undergraduate degree he taught 8th grade physical science for two years before pursuing and obtaining a M.S. degree in physics from Auburn University. At Auburn, Larson's research broadly focused on electrical energy generation by way of fusion. Larson then taught undergraduate physics at Auburn University – Montgomery for two semesters as an adjunct assistant professor of physics before matriculating into the University of Maryland’s physics Ph.D. program. At Maryland, Larson shifted his research focus from basic electrical energy generation, to basic electrical energy storage, and joined the University of Maryland’s DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) – Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage. While earning his Ph.D., Larson conceived of, developed, and applied advanced scanning probe techniques to enable the characterization of electrochemical, electro-mechanical, and ion transport phenomena at the micro-to-nanoscale. In the summer of 2018 Larson joined Dr. Kostecki’s research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to work on advancing Scattering Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy (sSNOM)-based infrared nanospectroscopy (nano-FTIR) for application to energy storage systems.  While at LBNL as a postdoc, Larson also benefited from an affiliate role with the Advanced Light Source's IR group led by Hans Bechtel.  Larson is now an Assistant Professor of physical chemistry at Baylor University, and in 2024, was additionally appointed as a Research Affiliate of LBNL.

Education

Physics, Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2017
Physics, M.S., Auburn University, 2011
Mathematics and Physics, B.S., Longwood University, 2007

Awards

Spot: Jonathan Larson -  October 25th 2019

For pioneering in situ near-field spectroscopy/microscopy of electrochemical interfaces in electrical energy storage devices