Andrei Valentinivitch Pakoulev

Andrei Valentinivitch Pakoulev Andrei V. Pakoulev was born in Russia in 1960 and received his Master’s degree at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1984. His thesis title was “Subpicosecond Spectroscopy of Bacteriorhodopsin”. He went on for a Ph.D. in Physics at Moscow State University and graduated in 1999. His Ph.D. thesis title was “Femtosecond Laser Spectroscopy of Photochromic Compounds: Temporal Dynamics of the Amplitude Nonlinear Response”. Both of these pieces of research were ground-breaking discoveries at the time. Following graduation, he worked in several jobs including a Research Engineer, Senior Engineer, Chief Engineer, Research Scientist, Teacher, Visiting Researcher, and Scientific Consultant at a number of government, university, and corporate laboratories. In 2000, Andrei came to the United States as a Visiting Scholar in Professor Dana Dlott’s laboratories at the University of Illinois were he did some remarkable experiments in following how energy is transferred between different vibrational modes. He worked at Illinois for four years and finally came to Wisconsin in 2004 to work in my research group. Andrei was one of those rare individuals with an amazingly broad background in the most sophisticated laser systems as well as some of the most advanced techniques in spectroscopy. He had a wide range of experiences having worked in both laser companies and laboratories. His work at the University of Illinois was very well-known where he did some very clever experiments. He excited particular vibrational modes in molecules and then watched how the molecules shared the vibrational modes throughout the rest of the molecule. He used Raman spectroscopy to probe and show the vibrational energy spread out into all the states. It was a method that was not done in any other laboratories. This research was published in many of the best research journals and read by scientists across the world. When Andrei came to Wisconsin, he rapidly took over research projects in coherent multidimensional spectroscopy and was the key individual in helping students become proficient in the lab. One of his most important discoveries was his work on discovering coherence transfer and all of the capabilities of TRIVE spectroscopy. This methodology had not been developed by anyone else in the world and Andrei's work established the foundations for this new field. When a new femtosecond laser system arrived, Andrei helped the next generation of graduate students in learning how to use the lasers and how to get important results that could help our development of new solar energy systems. Andrei was recognized in many ways for his research work. He received an International Science Foundation Grant from the Sonos Fund, a Basic Research Grant from the Russian Federation, and multiple awards for his technical innovations at the Central Institute for Machine-Building in Korolev. He holds two U.S. patents and two Russian Federation patents and published 50 research papers during his career, many in the strongest scientific research journals. In addition to being a wonderful scientist, Andrei was a wonderful individual who enjoyed helping and working with people. He was cheerful, humble, and had a ready smile. He could be serious but he could also become the life of the party. We learned many things from Andrei, including the proper way to drink vodka. Andrei was a real asset to my research group and we will really miss him.