Paul Barbara Scholarship Awardees

Caitlin Bresnahan, Louisiana State University
Her research focuses on developing reactive force-fields for the accurate study of water clusters containing acidic defects.
Pablo Martinez-Bulit, University of Windsor, Canada
His research is focused on the design and synthesis of Mechanically Interlocked Molecules and their incorporation into Metal-organic Frameworks in order to study their dynamic properties.

Dawn Merriman, Duke University
Her research interest is aimed at understanding how topology, electrostatics, and stacking influence solution state dynamics of the ubiquitous RNA helix-junction-helix (HJH) motif.
Henrik Larsson, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and University of Kiel, Institute for Physical Chemistry, Germany
His main scientific interest is in method development in theoretical quantum dynamics.

Oren Ben Dor, The Hebrew University, Israel
His research interest is in the interaction of chiral molecules and solid state magnetic materials on an applicable basis.
Thiago Acconcia, Institute of Physics "Gleb Wataghin," University of Campinas, Spain
His main scientific interest is concerned with the behavior of thermodynamic work produced in such finite-time processes.

Manuela A. Gross, University of Cambridge, England
Her research interests include renewable and sustainable energy sources, production of solar fuels, and green chemistry. Other areas of research include biomimics and bioinspired catalyst design, organometallic chemistry and transition metal catalysis.
Sebastian Buchenberg, Albert-Ludwig-University, Germany
His main scientific interest is the connection between fast time scale vibrational energy transport and slow time scale signal transport.

Timothy Duignan, Australian National University, Australia
His research involves developing models of ion-ion and ion-surface interactions in water using an implicit solvent model. The aim is to explain and predict the properties of electrolyte solutions, which play a vital role in a huge number of biological and industrial applications.
Nicholas Jackson, Northwestern University, USA
His research focuses on the interplay of conformational and electronic properties in conjugated polymers, using classical and quantum simulations to study aggregation solubility and charge generation in organic photovoltaics.

Rebecca Swett, Wayne State University, USA
Her research involves the design of bioinformatics software to correlate a gene region of interest to disease phenotypes. By searcing for region-restricted single nucleotide polymorphisms across multiple genome wide association studies, it is possible to find scientifically investigable mutations in any protein, RNA, or gene of interest.
Tomas Solomek, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
His research is devoted to the study of reaction mechanisms and the development of new photoremovable protecting groups; his interests encompass experimental and theoretical photochemistry and the chemistry of reactive intermediates, especially open-shell biradicals.

Natasha Hodas, Rutgers University, Department of Environmental Sciences, USA
Research: Refining estimates of human exposure to particulate air pollution in order to reduce error in health studies. Specifically, the development, evaluation, and implementation of a method to estimate indoor concentrations of outdoor-generated particles.
James J. Shepherd, University of Cambridge, The University Chemical Laboratory
Research includes the theoretical development of novel electronic structure techniques to describe solid state systems using plane-wave wavefunctions. In particular, using Ali Alavi's full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo to make progress toward exact solutions to the homogeneous electron gas Hamiltonian.

Christina Marie Ragain, University of Texas at Austin
Research: The Role of Electrostatics in Binding Discrimination Investigated by Vibrational Stark Effect Spectroscopy
Tanyana Gennadyevna Terentyeva, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Leuven, Belgium)
Research: Single Molecule Study of Enzyme Kinetics