Past Contributions
Significant developments from the group include: (1) establishing predictive molecular-level descriptions of charge transfer pathways in proteins, nucleic acids, and bacterial nanowires, (2) creating practical inverse design strategies for molecular materials and molecular libraries, and (3) formulating theoretical strategies to compute the optical rotations of chiral structures and their imprinted environments.
New Directions
Ongoing studies focus on designing molecular structures and assemblies for solar energy capture and conversion, defining the mechanism of multi-electron redox catalysis, mapping charge transfer pathways and mechanisms in extremophiles, designing molecular structures that focus oscillator strength for light absorption, designing de novo proteins to explore proton-coupled electron transfer mechanisms, designing diversity-oriented property-biased molecular libraries, exploring charge transfer mechanisms in bacterial nanowires, understanding how vibrational perturbations to molecules may change electron transport dynamics, and understanding the physical principles that control noble gas binding to host molecules. Our research is supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Department of Energy, and NASA.
