Stay up to date with the happenings of the Gagliardi group!
Nora Planas has accepted a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where she will start in the summer of 2014.Nora, it has been great to have you in the group. We look forward to following your successful career at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Congratulations and good luck!
Former graduate student, Joshua Borycz has accepted a position as STEM Librarian at Vanderbilt University. In this role he will be an advocate for library services to scientific researchers. In addition to teaching both graduate and undergraduate students how to conduct research more efficiently and how to organize and store research data, he will perform research to determine what tools and practices will most help faculty and students succeed in their coursework and research. Congratulations, Josh!
Postdoc, Davide Presti will soon return to Europe.It has been great to have you in the group and we wish you the best!
Navneet Khetrapal, who recently completed his Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has joined the group as a postdoc.Welcome, Navneet!
Jing Xie, a postdoc in the group, will soon depart to begin a faculty position at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Beijing Institute of Technology in Beijing, China.We wish you the very best, Professor Xie!
Former graduate student, Allison Dzubak has accepted a faculty position at Bowdoin College.Congratulations, Professor Dzubak!
Laura has received the 2019 Award in Theoretical Chemistry from the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
She was honored “for her contributions to the development of quantum chemical methods and their application to multireference systems containing metals, relevant to catalysis, and excited states.” With this award the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society recognizes the most outstanding scientific achievements of members of the Division. The 2019 recipients will be honored at the fall 2019 ACS National Meeting in San Diego.
Second-year graduate students, Riddhish Pandharkar, Thais Scott and Jacob White passed their preliminary examinations.Congratulations to the three of them!
Dr. Jenny Vitillo will start her independent position as assistant professor at the Università dell’Insubria, Italy.We are sorry to see her go, but this is terrific! Wishing you all the best, Jenny. Keep us posted with your successes.
The group welcomes two graduate students: Saumil Chheda and Benjamin Yeh.We are glad to have you with us.
Graduate student, Sam Stoneburner‘s recent paper, “Air Separation by Catechol-Ligated Transition Metals: A Quantum Chemical Screening”, was selected as the cover feature for the latest issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
Riddhish Umesh Pandharkar (co-advised by Chris Cramer) received an Honorable Mention for his outstanding work as a Teaching Assistant. Congrats Riddhish!
Laura has been elected a Member of Academia Europaea. Academia Europaea members are scientists and scholars who collectively aim to promote learning, education, and research. Founded in 1988, Academia Europaea has about 3,800 members who include leading experts from the physical sciences and technology, biological sciences and medicine, mathematics, the letters and humanities, social and cognitive sciences, economics, and the law. The Academy organizes meetings and workshops, provides scientific and scholarly advice (one of the 5 pan-European organisations recently invited by the European Commission to participate in the new Scientific Advice Mechanism – SAM) and publishes the European Review.
On August 10, Jan Kadlec (Charles University, Prague), Hung Vuong (Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA), and Elizabeth Smithwick (Duke University, Durham, NC) successfully completed the 2018 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry sponsored by CTC, ICDC, and NMGC.
Undergraduate researcher, Michelle Anderson participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program at NIST Boulder.While there, she worked on comparisons of different force fields for viscosity simulations of small molecules. The SURF Program is designed to inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in STEM through a unique research experience that provides an opportunity to gain valuable, hands-on experience, working with cutting edge technology in one of the world’s leading research organizations. Congratulations to Michelle.
Dr. Andrew Sand will soon start a position at Butler University, and Dr. Soumen Ghosh will begin a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute. We wish them all the best and look forward to following their successes!
The Gagliardi Group is excited that the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center has received a $12 million grant over four years from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue leading the discovery of a new class of materials used in energy research.
On June 22, Gagliardi group graduate student, Soumen Ghosh, (co-advised by Chris Cramer) successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “Static and Dynamic Charge and Energy Transport in Organic Electronics.”Dr. Ghosh will head next to a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute to work with Frank Neese. We wish him all the best as he transitions to his next professional undertaking!
On May 30, Laura gave a lecture at the ICS Symposium Honoring the 2018 Wolf Prize Laureates in Chemistry. During the symposium she was admitted to Honorary Membership of the Israel Chemical Society.
Dr. Vlaisavljevich is now assistant professor at the University of South Dakota and Dr. Bernales has just started working for Dow Chemical Company, in Midland, Michigan. We are very proud of you!
On May 7, Laura received the medal of science academy from the University of Bologna, her Alma Mater.
The theory faculty are happy to welcome three undergraduate students to Minnesota as participants in the 2018 Summer Undergraduate Theoretical Chemistry Research Fellowship sponsored by the Chemical Theory Center (CTC), Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC), and the Nanoporous Materials Genome Center (NMGC) within the Department of Chemistry.
They are here for 10 weeks (June-August) and will conduct research in theoretical chemistry. Elizabeth Smithwick (Duke University, Durham, NC) is working in the Goodpaster group, Jan Kadlec (Charles University, Prague) is working in the Gagliardi group, and Hung Vuong (Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA) is working in the Truhlar group. Welcome to all of you and we wish you the best with your summer research experience.
Dr. Xin-Ping Wu, a postdoctoral scholar co-advised by Don Truhlar, has proposed that metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) containing cerium would also be good photocatalysts. This work, supported by the Nanoporous Materials Genome Center, shows the power of theory in engineering the electronic properties of functional nanoporous materials.
Thais Scott, first-year graduate student, is one of six students honored through the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. This is quite an accomplishment!
Laura has been honored with a prestigious Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which will enable her to conduct research with scientists in Germany in 2019.