Category Archives: Research and Publications

The University of Minnesota’s Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC), the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and the Chemical Theory Center (CTC), along with the Theoretical Chemistry Group of the University of Torino, Italy, co-hosted The Minnesota Workshop, ab Initio Modeling in Solid State Chemistry with CRYSTAL, from July 9-14, at Minnesota. CRYSTAL is a computational tool for solid state chemistry and physics. Read more about the workshop and the software, and see photos of the participants on the Department of Chemistry’s web site.

Jenny G. Vitillo, Laura, and Berend Smit (EPF Lausanne) were the guest editors of a special issue of Chemical Review on “Carbon Capture and Separation.”The July 26 cover of Chemical Review, designed by Jenny, features the multipronged strategy envisaged to divert the trend in the terrestrial average temperature on time to keep it under the limit of 1.5 °C. Great work!

A poster session was held on Wednesday, July 12, as part of the CRYSTAL workshop. Five winners were chosen: Sara Dampf of Syracuse University , Tae Yun Kim of Seoul National University (South Korea), Duwage Perera of the University of Maine, Stefano Racioppi of the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy), and Gagliardi group member, Jingyun Ye. Congratulations to the winners!

From June 1-9, Laura was on a lecture tour in the United Kingdom for the RSC Bourke award that she received in 2016. She gave lectures at Imperial College London, at the University of Sheffield, at the Faraday Discussion on New Directions in Porous Crystalline Materials in Edinburgh, and at the University of Southampton.

Graduate student, Sam Stoneburner‘s recent paper, “Catechol-Ligated Transition Metals: A Quantum Chemical Study on a Promising System for Gas Separation”, was selected as the cover feature for the latest issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

The Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC), a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) is based at the University of Minnesota. Recently, a video showcasing the important work of the ICDC was produced. You can view it from the  ICDC web site’s home page.

A paper co-authored by postdoc, Jing Xie, and graduate student, Debmalya Ray, published in the journal Nature Chemistry on April 24, was featured on the Department of Chemistry’s website (also on April 24). To read the article and for a link to the paper, click here.

As part of The American Chemical Society (ACS) 253rd National Meeting & Exposition on Advanced Materials, Technologies, Systems & Processes, April 2-6, 2017, in San Francisco, there was a Women in COMP breakfast on Tuesday, April 4. This was a mentorship opportunity for female postdoctoral scholars. In addition to this special program, Laura and Gagliardi group postdoc Jing Xie gave several talks at ACS.

On December 20, Laura  gave the MARVEL NCCR Distinguished Lecture at EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland. The lecture was on “Homogenous and heterogeneous catalysis: two challenges for modern quantum chemistry.” You can listen to and watch the lecture here.

An article about Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), describing the work of some of the members of the Gagliardi and Cramer groups at Minnesota, along with other members of the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC), was featured in the News section of the Department of Chemistry’s web site. Read the article.