Our research lies at the mutual intersection of inorganic, physical, and materials chemistry. A primary goal is to develop spectroscopically-guided synthetic approaches to installing well-defined, molecular active sites in porous materials. This includes exploring how porous supports like zeolites and metal–organic frameworks bind transition metal centers, leading to active sites with unusual reactivity or physical properties. Targeted applications for lattice-constrained active sites range from heterogeneous catalysis and CO₂ conversion, to remediation of toxic ions, to quantum information science. In pursuit of this research, trainees gain expertise across a range of inorganic spectroscopies (UV-vis-NIR, diffuse reflectance FT-IR, Raman, resonance Raman, EPR, CD, MCD, VTVH-MCD, X-ray spectroscopy, Mössbauer, etc.), materials synthesis, and density functional theory calculations.