Category Archives: People and Events

Undergraduate researcher, Molly Andersen, has received two fellowships: from the Department of Chemistry, the David A. and Merece H. Johnson Scholarship “for outstanding achievement in undergraduate research as well as overall scholastic excellence,” and from the School of Physics and Astronomy, the Hagstrum Award in Physics, which “is awarded to a senior in physics showing excellence and promise in their chosen field.”Congratulations to Molly.

Postdoc, Varinia Bernales has been honored with one of two Wiley/ACS Computers in Chemistry Outstanding PostDoc Awards. From the award notification: “This award is a testimony of the high impact and quality of your research, and, as future leaders in the field, you are going to contribute in shaping the computational chemistry of the future.” Read more on the Department of Chemistry web site. This is quite an accomplishment!

The group welcomes new postdoc, Jenny Vitillo, from Università di Torino (University of Turin), Italy. She is co-advised by Laura and UMN Chemistry faculty member, Connie Lu. We are happy to have you here, Jenny.

The group welcomes visiting postdoctoral scholar, Walter A. Rabanal León of the Department of Chemistry at Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile, where he is a member of the Millennium Nucleus Molecular Engineering for Catalysis and Biosensors group.

The group welcomes three new members: postdoc Davide Presti, who comes to Minnesota from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy, University of Minnesota undergraduate researcher Michelle Anderson, and postdoc Carlo Gaggioli from Università degli Studi di Perugia, Perugia, Italy.

Second-year graduate students Prachi Sharma and Hung Pham passed their preliminary examinations. Congratulations to both!

On December 5, second-year graduate student Debmalya Ray passed his preliminary exam. Good job, Debmalya!

Laura received the 2016 Isaiah Shavitt Lecture Award from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, in Tel Aviv. In mid-December, she travelled to Technion to give lectures and lead a symposium. Read more on the Department of Chemistry’s web site.

Laura and Don Truhlar, along with some of the postdocs in the Gagliardi group, were awarded 229,000 massively parallel processing (MPP) hours for computing projects at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) for 2017, as part of the efforts of the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC), of which Laura is the Director. Read the story on the Department of Chemistry web site.

Postdoc Dale Pahls has accepted a postdoctoral researcher position in the Materials Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. We wish you the best, Dale!