Our research is focused on understanding and manipulating the electronic structures of transition metal ions in inorganic hosts for a wide range of applications such as solar energy conversion, photochemical water splitting and spin-based electronics. Many of the materials that we are interested in studying possess the physical properties that make them attractive candidates for multiple applications and are therefore referred to as multifunctional inorganic materials. We are developing synthetic methodologies to prepare novel colloidal nanocrystals of transition metal doped materials that can be integrated into nanostructured devices using standard solution processing techniques. To correlate the function of these multifunctional inorganic materials with the electronic structures of the transition metal ion we employ sophisticated characterization techniques including high-resolution electronic absorption, luminescence and magneto-optical spectroscopies.