New Pines Center at the College of Chemistry resonates with promise

For his subsequent research at Berkeley, Pines insists that credit goes to the self-dubbed "Pinenuts," the students and postdocs who have come through his lab over 50 years, many of whom continue to flourish as leaders in academia, industry, and government. Pines and the Pinenuts are known for multiple quantum spectroscopy, wherein groups of nuclear spins flip while absorbing groups of radiofrequency quanta. These concepts and methods are used in an array of areas, including quantum information processing, a growing area of research that brings together quantum mechanics and information theory. Pines and his dynamic team have repeatedly reframed assumptions about the essential behavior of the molecules that govern our world. Their ongoing contributions to solid state NMR include expanding the reach of the technology to analyze molecules that have nuclei that were previously considered not suitable for NMR analysis. Using simultaneous rotation of a given sample around two axes in space, the Pines group took a novel approach that enables imaging by emulating the symmetry of a geometric solid described by Plato, the icosahedron. Pines and his group also invented zero-field NMR — that is NMR without a magnet, which initially sounded very far-fetched, but is now an exciting methodology being deployed in areas from analytical chemistry and to fundamental atomic physics. While their approaches in zero-field and solid state NMR were initially met by the magnetic resonance community with skepticism, Pines and the Pinenuts have repeatedly proved successful at turning seemingly impossible ideas into viable experiments.

While he began at Berkeley teaching graduate students, Pines enthusiastically shared his love for chemistry with undergraduates. The large lecture halls of foundational chemistry courses he taught were abuzz with students in Chemistry 1A responding to his "ChemQuizzes" — opportunities to solve problems together in class and then share their insights with the group as a whole. It's no surprise that Pines' many accolades include Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award — his charisma, magnetic personality, openness, and enthusiasm for his subject are infectious.

Thanks to this generous investment, the Pines Magnetic Resonance Center will no doubt generate new insights and applications for NMR. The College of Chemistry will continue to hum and resonate with game-changing insights and launch remarkable careers. Pines and the Pinenuts, through the art and practice of chemistry, have made the impossible possible and laid the groundwork for advancements to come. Pines attributes much of his success with the Pinenuts to collaborations with extraordinary colleagues at Berkeley, among them David Wemmer in chemical biology, Jeffrey Reimer in chemical engineering, John Clarke in condensed matter physics, Dmitry Budker in atomic and molecular optics, and Ashok Ajoy, who recently joined the chemistry faculty pursuing magnetic resonance research. Other collaborations include colleagues from a diverse range of disciplines such as mathematics, engineering, biology, and medicine.

As Pines would say, acknowledging the vital support of the donor and the wider community and the generative, cross-disciplinary atmosphere that scientists here share: "The cross-disciplinary culture, the collaborative intellectual atmosphere, that's the beauty of Berkeley."

Source article appears on The Campaign for Berkeley's Light the Way website: New Pines Center at the College of Chemistry resonates with promise