Jacob T. Shelley

Biography

Jacob (Jake) Shelley earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Northern Arizona University. During his undergraduate career, he was a summer intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory and worked on several projects including metallomics with X-ray fluorescence (XRF) detection, developing nanoporous silica substrates for matrix-free MALDI, and method development for detecting a wide range of radioactive materials. He completed his Ph.D. at Indiana University under Gary Hieftje where he studied novel plasma ionization sources for molecular mass spectrometry.  Jake did postdoctoral research with Graham Cooks at Purdue University developing portable mass spectrometers capable of in situ analyses.  He was then awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellowship to work with Profs. Uwe Karst and Carsten Engelhard at the University of Münster. From there, Jake became Assistant Professor at Kent State University 2014 before becoming the Alan Paul Schulz Career Development Professor of Chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 2016, where he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2023.  His research interests lie in the development of new hardware and software tools for mass spectrometry, which enable rapid, sensitive detection and identification of analytes in complex matrices.  

In addition, his research group uses high-energy plasma-generated species to perform unique gas-phase synthesis.  Jake’s recognitions include a Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Bunsen-Kirchoff Award, The Analytical Scientist’s Top 40 Under 40 Power List, Spectroscopy’s 2020 Emerging Leader in Atomic Spectroscopy Award, 2021 EAS Young Investigator Award, the 2021 JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship, and the 2023 FACSS Innovation Award.  He’s authored 52 peer-reviewed journal articles (h-index=29), seven patents/patent applications, and has given more than 85 invited presentations worldwide.

RSC affiliations

• Editorial board, JAAS (Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry)