Four UCLA students from Chemistry & Biochemistry labs won poster awards at the annual Southern California conference on theoretical chemistry (SoCalTheoChem) hosted at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) on October 5, 2024.
The one-day regional symposium showcased cutting-edge research in theoretical chemistry through faculty talks and a poster session that highlighted the breadth and excellence of research at UCLA. Undergraduate Hannah Liu (Professor Benjamin Schwartz’s group), graduate student Ryan Choi (Professor Anastassia Alexandrova’s group), and postdoctoral researchers Dr. Shobhit S. Chaturvedi (Alexandrova group) and Dr. Yonghyuk Lee (Alexandrova group) were recognized for their outstanding poster presentations.
About the awardees:
Hannah Liu is a fourth-year chemistry undergraduate student with a minor in statistics/data science. Her research in the Schwartz group focuses on analyzing the dynamics of chemical reactions in solution phase and solvent effects on photodissociation reactions to better understand quantum decoherence. Her poster “Using the Competitive Ion Effect to Elucidate the Structure of the Hydrated Electron in Aqueous Salt Solutions” was based on her recently published work which studies solvated electron models through molecular dynamic simulations. Hannah was one of the two undergraduate awardees.
Ryan Choi is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Alexandrova group whose work focuses on computational design of molecular qubits. His poster “Chemical Design of Optical Cycling Centers” highlighted the group’s research on building systems of multiple qubits on surfaces and in ion traps. Ryan was one of the top two graduate students voted by faculty and he gave an award talk at the symposium.
Dr. Yonghyuk Lee presented his poster “Accelerated Sampling of Catalyst Surfaces with Machine-Learning Potentials Under Reaction Conditions.” His research in the Alexandrova group focuses on 1) using first-principles calculations to characterize the chemical properties of novel heterogeneous catalysts and 2) employing multi-scale modeling as well as integrating machine-learning interatomic potentials to investigate the intricate interfaces of heterogeneous catalysts under specific reaction conditions.
Dr. Shobhit S. Chaturvedi’s research in the Alexandrova group focuses on utilizing computational modeling to explore the role of protein scaffolds in enzyme catalysis. His research aims to identify descriptors that explain enzymatic catalysis, with the goal of using these descriptors for rational design of enzymes optimized for industrial and pharmaceutical applications. He presented his poster “Electric Fields as Key Determinants of Enzyme Catalysis” and was among the seven postdoctoral awardees.
Article by Zhuoying Lin, zylin@g.ucla.edu.
