Drs. Andrés Montoya-Castillo and Jacob H. Olshansky receive top honors for outstanding contributions to theoretical and experimental chemical physics.
MELVILLE, N.Y. August 31, 2026 — AIP Publishing and The Journal of Chemical Physics are honored to announce the recipients of the 2025 Journal of Chemical Physics Best Paper by an Emerging Investigator Awards, recognizing outstanding contributions in both theoretical and experimental research. This year’s honorees are Dr. Andrés Montoya-Castillo of the University of Colorado Boulder and Dr. Jacob H. Olshansky of Amherst College.
The papers were selected from the 2025 Journal of Chemical Physics (JCP) Emerging Investigators Special Collection by a committee of editorial advisory board members. Inclusion in the special collection is itself a mark of distinction, reflecting its highly selective standards for acceptance.
In addition to receiving an honorarium, Drs. Montoya-Castillo and Olshansky will be invited to write a Perspective article for JCP and present at the 2027 APS Global Physics Summit.
Submissions for the 2026 JCP Emerging Investigators Special Collection are open through December 31, 2026. To qualify, the principal investigator must be within 10 years of the graduation date for their advanced degree.
Advancing Theory: Andrés Montoya-Castillo
Dr. Montoya-Castillo was recognized as the winner of the Best Theoretical Paper award for, “Space-local memory in generalized master equations: Reaching the thermodynamic limit for the cost of a small lattice simulation”, published in JCP.
“It is a great honor for me and the talented students I work with, especially coming from JCP—long a home for the most exciting work in chemical physics,” said Dr. Montoya-Castillo. “I’m delighted it highlights our work to remake dimensionality reduction: from the coarse starting point of decades of approximations into noise-resilient, data-driven tools that turn costly but accurate calculations and experiments into predictions for ever more complex systems, at experimentally relevant scales.”
Andrés Montoya-Castillo is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, where his research group develops and applies multiscale methods to predict, understand, and control the flow of charge, energy, and information through complex condensed-phase environments, with applications spanning energy conversion, quantum information, and biophysics.
Akihito Ishizaki, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo and member of the JCP editorial advisory board and Emerging Investigator Special Collection Best Paper committee, highlighted the paper’s impact: “This paper stands out for its conceptually elegant and powerful insight that memory in generalized master equations can possess not only a finite lifetime but also a finite spatial reach, and for transforming this insight into a practical computational framework.”
Dr. Montoya-Castillo obtained his bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and literature, with a minor in physics, from Macaulay Honors College. He then earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Columbia University, where he developed methods to simulate nonadiabatic quantum dynamics with Prof. David Reichman, before completing postdoctoral research at Stanford University with Prof. Thomas Markland. In 2020, he joined the University of Colorado Boulder faculty, where he is affiliated with the Materials Science and Engineering Program and the Interdepartmental Biophysics Program. He has since received numerous early career honors, including a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award (2023), a Packard Fellowship (2024), and an NSF CAREER Award (2025).
More information on Dr. Montoya-Castillo’s research can be found on his group website.
Pioneering Experiment: Jacob H. Olshansky
Dr. Olshansky was recognized as the winner of the Best Experimental Paper award for, “ZnO quantum dot–molecule conjugates: Chemical interactions, charge dynamics, and spin polarization”, published in JCP.
“It is truly an honor to receive this recognition from JCP,” said Dr. Olshansky. “This project started in the summer of 2021 and involved four undergraduate researchers and collaborators at three institutions. Notably, the first three authors performed this work as undergraduates in my lab. This award is a recognition of these talented students and collaborators I have been so lucky to work with. It’s also a reminder that for some projects, slow and steady progress over many years is what it takes.”
Lu Wei, Professor of Chemistry at Caltech and member of the JCP editorial advisory board and Emerging Investigator Special Collection Best Paper committee, emphasized the technical depth of the study: “This paper presents a systematic study of perylene–ZnO quantum dot conjugates with varied linker lengths, revealing how molecular geometry influences both surface binding and photoinduced charge separation. By combining binding analysis, optical spectroscopy, transient absorption, and time-resolved EPR, the authors establish relationships between molecular structure, charge-transfer kinetics, and spin-polarized radical-pair/triplet formation. The resulting design principles provide useful guidance for the development of ZnO quantum dot–molecule interfaces with potential applications in photocatalysis, optically addressable spin qubits, and other quantum technologies.”
Matthew Sheldon, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, and member of the JCP editorial advisory board and Emerging Investigator Special Collection Best Paper committee, added: “This is an intriguing and timely study that connects quantum dot–molecule hybrid materials with the rapidly developing area of spin-polarized charge-transfer states. The experimental system is elegant and highly systematic, allowing the authors to relate molecular structure to binding, charge-transfer kinetics, and the generation of spin-polarized radical pairs and triplets. The combination of technical clarity and broad generalizable insight makes the work especially impactful.”
Olshansky is an experimental physical chemist and Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Amherst College, where he leads a research group exploring the photophysics and spin physics of semiconductor nanomaterials. The group employs time-resolved spectroscopy to study how these materials use photons to both drive chemical reactions and generate spin polarization.
Dr. Olshansky earned bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and physics from Haverford College before completing a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he investigated charge transfer from photoexcited quantum dots under the guidance of Paul Alivisatos. Following his Ph.D., he completed postdoctoral research with Mike Wasielewski at Northwestern University, studying the spin dynamics of photogenerated charges in synthetic DNA, before joining the Amherst College faculty in 2020.
More details on Dr. Olshansky’s research can be found on his lab website.
To view the full list of authors and papers included in the 2025 JCP Emerging Investigators Special Collection, or to learn more about the annual awards, visit the main JCP Emerging Investigators page.
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