Two graduate students from the chemistry department, Alexander Sokolov and Tao Liang, have won the 2013 Dissertation Completion Award. They will receive funding from the graduate school this coming academic year in order to complete their dissertations by next summer at the latest. Alexander Sokolov works for Professor Schaefer developing ab initio computational methods. He is currently working on the mathematics and programming of a new method called density cumulant functional theory (DCFT) – no relation to density functional theory – in the ab initio quantum chemistry software package PSI4. He has already published two papers on this subject in the Journal of Chemical Physics. After completion of his Ph.D., Alex plans to obtain a professorship and continue to be an active researcher. He has already had some experience teaching graduate students this past spring while acting as a teaching assistant for Professor Schaefer’s graduate-level quantum chemistry course. Tao Liang works for Professer Douberly on both experimental and computational aspects in the fundamental understanding of atmospheric reactions involving the hydroxyl radical. In his research he isolates radicals in superfluid helium nanodroplets and analyzes them through various spectroscopic methods to find never-before-seen conformations. Tao has also built a computer cluster for the Douberly group, which he uses to compute molecular structures and compare computed properties to properties found experimentally. After graduation he plans to pursue an academic post-doc position in hopes of eventually acquiring a faculty position where he can manage his own research group. Both students have already contributed greatly to their respective scientific fields and will undoubtedly continue to be active scientists. Although this award means both will be leaving the UGA chemistry department at the end of the coming academic year, we can look forward to following their careers through their future scientific works.
