Theory Seminar Series

The Theory Seminar Series provides a forum for the theory groups in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (CCE) to share their research and to learn from and collaborate with one another. Each session is led by a particular theory group, and the format is open-ended. A session can feature one or more speakers, and can be structured as a more traditional research talk, or a tutorial, literature review, overview of a group's research areas, etc.

Organizer: Maddy Murphy

Winter 2026

Time: Every other Wednesday at 3-4 pm (please see below for dates and any exceptions)
Location: Spalding 106 (unless otherwise specified below)

Jan. 21: Presentations by Wang Group members

"When Solvent Matters: Fundamental Phase Reversals in Polyelectrolyte Coacervation" - Pierre Walker"Ion Transport in Polymers: Effects of Glass Transition and Electrostatic Correlations" - Alexandros Tsamopoulos

Feb. 4: Presentations by Sharma Group members

"Nuclear gradients from auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo and their applications" - Jo Kurian"Size-extensive AFQMC with perturbative CCSD Trial" - Yichi Zhang

Feb. 18: Presentations by Chan Group members

"High-throughput workflow for discovery of superconducting candidate" - Petra Shih"Towards Triplet Superconducting Phase via Density Matrix Embedding Theory" - Shuoxue Li

Mar. 4: Presentations by Goddard Group members

TBD

Mar. 18: TBD

Fall 2025

Time: Every other Wednesday at 4-5 pm (please see below for dates and any exceptions)
Location: Noyes 153 (unless otherwise specified below)

Aug. 13: Research directions in the Chan Group

A joint talk by Chan Group members Xing Zhang, Shunyue Yuan, Gunhee Park, and Chris Chen

Aug. 27: Progress in QM and MD simulations of materials, catalysts, and biomolecular systems in the Goddard Group

"Activation mechanism of the metabotropic GABAb receptor" - Moon Young Yang"Bicarbonate-carbonic acid equilibrium and pH in microenvironments" - Prabhat Prakash"Theoretical Cyclic Voltammogram for Iridium oxide" - Soonho Kwon"Understanding the Interface Using Ab-initio Methods and Artificial Intelligence" - Sejun Kim

Sep. 10: Work on coarse-grained theories and simulations for macromolecular systems in the Wang Group

A joint talk by Wang Group members Sam Varner, Pierre Walker, and Chao Duan

Sep. 24: Presentations by Sharma Group members

"Unimolecular kinetics of alkoxy and beta-hydroxyalkoxy radicals" - Baljit Singh"On the Origin of Bias in cp-AFQMC" - Alfred Li

Oct. 15: Presentation by Fong Group member

"Transport-Driven Origins of Specific Ion Effects in Electrochemical Nitrate Reduction" - Maddy Murphy3 pm in Spalding Lab 106

Oct. 29: Presentations by Brady Group members

"Microrheology of active suspensions" - Boyuan Chen"Effects of Hydrodynamics in non-equilibrium phase separation" - Edmond Zhou3 pm in Spalding Lab 106

Nov. 12: Presentations by Chan Group members

"Achieving Precise Simulations of Biochemistry through a Hierarchical Learning of Quantum Chemistry" - Chenghan Li"Stochastic-Tensor-Contraction Coupled Cluster" - Jiace Sun3 pm in Spalding Lab 106

Nov. 26: No meeting

Dec. 10: Presentations by Goddard Group members

"Reactive Molecular Dynamics-Guided Deconstruction of Single-Use Plastics for Value-Added Chemicals and Novel Materials" - Tridip Das"Many-Body Perturbation Theory for Solvated Low-Dimensional Systems" - Sejun Kim3 pm in Spalding Lab 106