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    PI: Dr. Anastassia Alexandrova

    Anastassia obtained her B.S./M.S. degree with highest honors from Saratov State University (Russia), in 2000, and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Physical Chemistry from Utah State University, in 2005. She was a Postdoctoral Associate, and then an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. Anastassia joined the Faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA, and CNSI in 2010. She is a recipient of numerous awards, such as NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Fellowship 2013, DARPA Young Faculty Award 2011, Fulbright Fellowship 2016, ACS WCC Rising Star Award 2016, 2020 ACS Phys Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry, 2021 Max Planck-Humboldt medal, as well as UCLA undergraduate research mentorship award 2018, and 2019 distinguished teaching award (the highest honor for teaching given in UCLA).

    Tel: +1 (310) 825-3769
    Email: ana@chem.ucla.edu



Dr. Derek Urwin, Adjunct Assistant Professor

Derek completed his M.S. work in applied math, in UCLA, and his Ph.D. in theoretical physical chemistry in this lab. Derek leads a research program on chemical toxicology, carcinogenes, and health of firefighters, and remains part of our group, now as a collaborator. His primary job is serving the public as a fire fighter with the Los Angeles County Fire Department. He also serves as Chief Science Advisor at the IAF.
E-mail: here

Dr. Harry Morgan, Postdoctoral Associate

Harry obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Inorganic Chemistry, from the University of Oxford, UK, group of Prof. John McGrady.

Project: Understading and taming fluxionality of supported cluster catalysts. Strongly correlated materials. Chemical bonding.
E-mail: here

Dr. Shobhit Chaturvedi, Postdoctoral Associate

Shobhit obtained his Ph.D. from Michigan Technological University, group of Prof. Christo Christov.

Project: Understanding the role of the protein scaffold in enzymatic catalysis.
E-mail: here

Zisheng Zhang, Graduate Student, Dean's Scholar

Zisheng graduated from SUSTech in China, where he was an undergraduate researcher with Prof. Jun Li. He also spent a summer in our group in UCLA as a CSST Scholar, during his undergraduate studies.

Projects: Dynamic heterogeneous catalytic and electro-catalytic interfaces, fundamental theory and variety of applications.
Email: here

Santiago Vargas, Graduate Student, Competitive Edge Scholar, DOE Graduate Fellow

Santiago graduated from Harvard where he did research with Alan Aspuru-Guzik.

Project: ML for enzymology, catalysis, drug discovery, and - you name it, basically.
Email: here

Claire Dickerson, Graduate Student, NSF Fellow

Claire graduated from the University of Rochester, and had internships in Schrodinger Inc., and the University of Sydney, before joining UCLA.

Project: Molecular qubits beyond a few atoms in size.
Email: here

Robert Lavroff, Graduate Student, NSF Fellow

Rob graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Chemical Engineering.

Project: Strongly correlated functional materials and interfaces, development of embedding electronic structure techniques. Rob is co-supervised with Dr. Denis Usvyat (Humboldt University, Berlin).
Email: here

Nathaniel Johnston, Graduate Student

Nathaniel obtained his B.S. degree in Westmont College in California.

Project: Design of artificial metalloenzymes.
Email: here

Cecilia Chang, Graduate Student, NSF-UCLA Quantum Science and Engineering Fellow

Cecilia obtained his B.S. degree in Cornell University, where she also did reaserach with Nandini Ananth.

Project: Design of molecular qubits.
Email: here

Winston Gee, Graduate Student

Winston graduated from the Westmont College. He is jointly supervised with Abby Doyle.

Project: Dynamic electrocatalytic interfaces, CO2RR, reactive CO2 capture.
Email: here

Will Laderer, Graduate Student, NSF-UCLA Quantum Science and Engineering Fellow

Will got his B.S. degree in Stony Brook University.

Project: Functional quantum materials.
Email: here

Taras Khvorost, Graduate Student

Taras got his B.S. degree in St. Petersburg State University, and his M.S. in ITMO University - group of Evgeny Pidko.

Project: Chemistry of QIS.
Email: here

Pujan Ajmera, Graduate Student

Pujan got his B.S. degree in the University of Michigan.

Project: Role of electric and magnetic fields in governing quantum processes in biology.
Email: here

Shawn Chiu, Graduate Student

Shawn got his B.S. degree in Columbia University.

Project: Reactive CO2 capture.
Email: here

Lucas Tecot, CS Graduate Student

Project: Lucas is a lab affitiate, attacking chemistry problems with the tools of machine learning, while working on his Ph.D. in computer science.
Email: here

Tom Hong, Undergraduate Student

Project: Sintering mechanism and prevention in cluster catalysis.
Email: here

Elise Tran, Undergraduate Student

Project: Genotoxicity of unclassified PAHs.
Email: here

Edison Cummings, Undergraduate Student

Project: Selectivity in catalysis on surface-supported fluxional clusters
Email: here

Samuel Greenbank, Exchange Undergraduate Student

Samuel joined us for 1 year as a visiting student from the University of Matchester, UK.

Project: Reactive CO2 capture
Email: here

Dylan Karkainen, Undergraduate Student

Project: Reactive CO2 air capture

Jack Cokas, Undergraduate Student

Project: Cluster catalyst sintering and deactivation

Mia Calvillo, Undergraduate Student

Project: Molecular qubits

    Group Alumni:

    Patricia Poths (Ph.D. 2023) => Humboldt Fellow at Fritz-Haber Institute, Berlin, Germany, group of Karsten Reuter.
    Jack Fulller (Ph.D. 2021) => Postdoc at PNNL.
    Dr. Daniel Bim (postdoc, 2018-2020) => Marie Curie Fellow in Caltech.
    Matthew Hennefarth (B.S. 2020, Staff Scientist 2020-2021) => graduate student at University of Chicago, group of Laura Gagliardi.
    Kirill Shumilov (B.S. 2020, M.S. 2021) => graduate student at University of Washington, group of Xiaosong Li.
    David Reilley (Ph.D. 2021) => engineer at QSimulate.
    Borna Zandkarimi (Ph.D. 2020) => Postdoc at UCSD, group of Joel Yuen => Amgen.
    Dr. Han Guo (postdoc, 2018-2020) => engineer in pharma, Beijing, China.
    Dr. Julen Munarriz (postdoc, 2019-2020) => Assistant Professor in University of Oviedo, Spain.
    Dr. Sandra Brown (Postdoc, 2019-2020) => Assistant Professor in Harvey Mudd College.
    Hang Yin (B.S. 2019) => graduate student at UCSD.
    Huanchen Zhai (Ph.D. 2019) => Postdoc in Caltech, group of Garnet Chan.
    Addis Fuhr (Ph.D. 2019, co-advised with Philippe Sautet and Victor Klimov) => MITRE => Staff Scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
    Jiyuan Liu (CSC Scholar, 2016-2018) => continued his Ph.D. research in East China Institute of Science and Technology in Shanghai.
    PJ Robinson (BS 2018) => PhD student in Columbia University, group of David Reichman => Postdoc in Harvard, group of Jonhoo Lee.
    Dr. Elisa Jimenez-Izal (Postdoc 2014-2018) => Ikerbasque Fellow => Assistant Professor, DIPC, Donostia, Basque Country, Spain.
    Amanda Morgenstern (co-supervised student from Colorado School of Mines; advisor - Mark Eberhart; Ph.D. 2017) => Assistant Professor in Colorado University, Colorado Springs.
    Daniel Hartfield (MS 2017) => highschool teacher of chemistry.
    Mai-Anh Ha (PhD 2017) => Directors Postdoctoral Fellow, and then staff in NREL.
    Michael Nechay (PhD 2017) => Data Scientist at Dell.
    Caleb Huang (undergraduate reseracher) => post-BS program at NIH.
    Zhihao Cui (CSST Summer student 2016) => PhD student in Caltech, group of Garnet Chan.
    Raymond Wang (CSST Summer student 2015) => graduate student in Northwestern University, group of Toru Shiozaki.
    Crystal Valdez (PhD 2015) => Postdoc in Stanford, group of Prof. Ed Solomon, then in Pfizer.
    Anjan Nandula (MS 2015) => engineer in WorldQuant.
    Dr. Jonny Dadras (Postdoc, 2012-2014) => Postdoc in Caltech, group of William Goddard.
    Dr. Tony Smith (Postdoc jointly with Prof. Radu, UCLA Medical School, 2012-2014) => data scientist in Teradata => Google.
    Dr. Jin Zhang (Postdoc, 2010-2013) => Engineer in Google.
    Lu Shen (MS 2014) => PhD student in UCLA, Physics.
    Dr. Manuel Sparta (Postdoc, 2010-2012) => Postdoc at Max Planck Institute, Mulheim an der Ruhr, group of Frank Neese.
    Mioy Huynh (B.S. 2012, URFP and CARE Research Fellow, 2010-2012) => Ph.D. student in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, group of Sharon Hammes-Schieffer; then lecturer of chemistry at Yale University; then Assistant Professor at Clarmont College.
    Diana Yu (B.S. 2012, Kivelson Fellow, 2011-2012) => Ph.D. student in UC Merced, then faculty in Douglas College, BC, Canada.
    Natalya Burmistrova (visiting scholar, 2012) => Assistant Professor in Saratov University, Russia.
    Alina Sergeeva (visiting graduate student, 2012) => Postdoctoal Associate at Columbia University.