Charlie Desnoyers is not your typical “legacy” student. Sure, his grandpa, Henry Desnoyers, was a Notre Dame alumnus. But to a young Desnoyers growing up in south suburban Chicago, Henry Thomas Desnoyers — “HT” to his friends — was just “Pop,” second-generation proprietor of Desnoyers Hardware, the oldest family-owned hardware store in South Dakota.
“I didn’t realize he went to Notre Dame until I was in high school, because he passed when I was 8 years old,” Desnoyers said of his father’s father, who died in 2012 from complications from ALS, which over the course of three long years left the proud family man and lifelong Catholic immobilized and unable to speak without technological assistance. “So, I never really knew much about his history.”
Still, he draws considerable inspiration from his grandpa, who in addition to running Desnoyers Hardware managed the family farm among the rolling hills of Clark County in eastern South Dakota.
“He was supposed to go to medical school, but his father passed away so he had to work in the family hardware, and that’s what he did for the rest of his life,” Desnoyers said. “That really inspired me, that level of sacrifice.”
Last fall, in honor of his grandpa, Desnoyers participated in the Chicago Marathon as part of Team ALS, finishing in an impressive 3 hours and 28 minutes. The team raised more than $660,000 for ALS United Illinois. He said he looks forward to running more in his honor.
An aspiring scientist, Desnoyers, who will graduate this month with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the College of Science, has shown the same level of dedication and passion for his studies, spending nearly as much time in the lab as in the classroom since arriving in South Bend.
A McNeill Common Good Fellow with the Institute for Social Concerns, he has collaborated with Marya Lieberman, the Nancy Dee Professor of Cancer Research, on a testing protocol for fentanyl test strips, and with Paul Bohn, the Arthur J. Schmitt professor of chemistry and biochemistry, on a method for isolating extracellular vesicles, with implications for safe and effective vaccine delivery and high-precision biological measurements.
With Bohn, he worked in Notre Dame’s nanofabrication facility, a world-class teaching and research clean room, to create arrays of nanoscopic holes in metal films, which he then used to conduct measurements of individual vesicles. It was a difficult experiment, he said, but one that yielded significant results.
Farther afield, he spent last summer working with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. in southwest rural Alaska — a remote area accessible only by plane.
“I worked on a few different projects there, but the motivation was understanding how we deliver efficient healthcare in low resource and rural communities,” he said.
He was especially interested in vaccine delivery, he said, which due to the inherent instability of many vaccines can be difficult in remote areas.
More recently, he traveled to Cyprus for several weeks to learn about the immigration situation there and efforts on the part of governments and religious and nonprofit organizations to address it.
His current research involves the causes of light-induced phase separation in mixed halide perovskites — a type of semiconductor material used in LEDs and solar cells — and the possibility of engineering these materials to function as tunable light sources.
In recognition of these and other efforts, Desnoyers was given the Dr. Norbert L. Weich Award in 2025. The award, recognizing excellence in academics and undergraduate research in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is given annually to an outstanding junior.
“Charlie is everything you’d want to see in an undergraduate research colleague — smart, innately curious and genuinely excited about research,” Bohn said. “He displays all of the traits that will set him up for a successful Ph.D., and I am truly excited to see what he accomplishes in the next phases of his career.”
Looking ahead, Desnoyers has been accepted into a doctoral program in chemistry at Northwestern University, where he will continue investigating questions regarding light-matter interactions at the nanoscale starting this fall.
He credits Notre Dame, in part, for his success.
“Notre Dame is a great place to learn both inside and outside of the classroom,” he said, adding, “It makes great scientists but it also makes great humans.”
Surely, “Pop” would be proud.