Congratulations to Josh Goings, who has been awarded a 2014 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship to support his Ph.D. work. Josh is a second year graduate student whose research involves the development of new post-SCF methods for large molecular systems.

Feizhi Ding’s paper published early last year titled “An efficient method for calculating dynamical hyperpolarizabilities using real-time time-dependent density functional theory” was selected for the The Journal of Chemical Physics 2013 Editors’ Choice Collection. From the JCP’s website:

The Editors at The Journal of Chemical Physics facilitate publication of the most innovative and influential articles in the field of Chemical Physics each year. In the following collection, the Editors have selected a few of the many notable JCP articles published in 2013 that present ground-breaking research. This collection represents only a small fraction of the critical research published in JCP in 2013 and is representative of the broad cross-section of topics that the journal covers. These seminal articles are freely available online until the end of 2014.

This paper was a collaborative work with Ben Van Kuiken of the Khalil group and Bruce Eichinger at the University of Washington. Feizhi employed time-domain TDDFT using the MMUT algorithm for electron dynamics developed by Xiaosong to obtain the time-dependent dipole response of a system perturbed by a monochromatic wave. By fitting each order of the time-dependent dipole response to sinusoidal waves with harmonic frequencies, he was able to obtain the corresponding (hyper)polarizabilities. The paper is now available online free until the end of 2014 and was selected as one of JCP’s Research Highlights last year.

Congratulations to Feizhi Ding for being awarded the Department of Chemistry Travel Award. This award provides funds for students to travel to their alma mater during the 2013-2014 academic year to present their research. The award recognizes students for their excellent performance at the University of Washington and as an excellent spokesperson for the graduate program. Feizhi will now coordinate a time to visit his alma mater, the University of Science and Technology of China.

Congratulations, Joseph! Joseph is one of five recipients of the Chemical Computing Group (CCG) and the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Division of Computers in Chemistry (COMP) Excellence Award for the Fall 2013 ACS National Meeting in Indiana. Joseph will receive financial support to present his poster titled, Theoretical investigation of ion diffusion pathways in II-VI semiconductor nanocrystals, during the COMP poster session at the ACS meeting.

Jane Hung, an undergraduate researcher in the Li group, has won the very prestigious Arts and Science’s Dean’s Medal for the Natural Sciences. Congratulations Jane!

Ryan McMorris, an undergraduate researcher in the Li group, won a very competitive Mary Gates Research Scholarship. The scholarship is “intended to enhance the educational experiences of undergraduate students at the University of Washington while they are engaged in research guided by faculty.” The scholarship provides students with financial support of $4000 over two quarters. Ryan will use this funding to continue his work of modeling the electronic structure properties of core/shell CdSe/CdS quantum dots to gain insight into the optical properties of the materials for potential use in photovoltaic devices.

Congratulations to Xiaosong for winning the OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty in Computational Chemistry Award at the Spring 2012 American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Diego. As part of the award, Xiaosong was given financial support to attend the conference and presented a poster titled “Energy-specific Linear Response TDHF/TDDFT Methods for Calculating High-energy Excited States” at the COMP poster session.