News

Different enantiomers of chiral molecules absorb left- and right-handed circularly polarized light differently. This is the physical basis of circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, and is one of the most powerful experimental techniques for characterizing enantiomers. Unfortunately, calculating CD spectroscopy is an extremely challenging task. In “An Atomic Orbital Based Real-Time Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory for . . .

It’s been a big month for the Li group with three students defending and gaining their doctorate degrees. Phu Nguyen kicked off the defenses on May 19 by discussing his work on molecular dynamics and modeling X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy. He has accepted a job at Amazon and has already started working there. Bo Peng defended . . .

A new paper is now online published in collaboration with Lin Chen’s group at Northwestern University. Ultrafast electronic dynamics in an excited metalloporphyrin were tracked with X-ray Transient Absorption (XTA). These are some of the highest temporal resolution X-ray experiments performed with the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The XTA spectra were modeled with our . . .

The group is happy to welcome back Greta Donati after completing her PhD! Greta worked with us a visiting student last year while she was a graduate student with Nadia Rega at the University of Napoli Federico II and she’s now back in Seattle as a postdoc. She has done some phenomenal work in the . . .

We’ve posted a few videos of some interesting electronic dynamics calculated with our new software package Chronus Quantum. A big thanks to our own Joshua Goings for making these. Check out how the electron density is perturbed by on resonant electric fields.

Congratulations to Bo on winning the very prestigious Linus Pauling Fellowship from Pacific Northwest National Lab. This fellowship is very competitive and is only awarded to two or three people every year. Congratulations, Bo!

Congratulations to Hongbin on passing his 2nd year exam. He gave a very nice talk detailing his recent work on photoreduced quantum dots and proposed a project on modeling magnetic circular dichroism. These are both very challenging topics and he explained them eloquently. Congratulations!

Joe Kasper has won a 2016 Pacific Northwest National Lab Graduate Fellowship. This award is granted to outstanding first year graduate students at UW. Congratulations, Joe!