About Me

I received my B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington in June 2013. The thermodynamics and statistical mechanics coursework I took as an undergraduate inspired me to pursue graduate school, with research focusing on chemical reactivity.

In September 2013, I joined the PhD program in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California Davis in Davis, CA, where I first met my PhD advisor Prof. Dean J. Tantillo, whose research group explored the chemistry of organic reaction mechanisms using computational tools. I was the first graduate student with an emphasis in physical chemistry to join the group (previously, it had been exclusively organic chemists) and I used this specialization to become involved in a unique set of projects that required learning to use tools that were new to the group: ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and Python scripting for analysis. I specifically focused on reactions containing post-transition state bifurcations, a unique class of reactions that are not well-described by traditional transition state theories.

In September 2018, I joined the CHemistry and Mathematics in Phase Space (CHAMPS) program at the University of in Bristol, England to work with Prof. Barry Carpenter, who was one of the first physical organic chemistry researchers to recognize the importance of non-statistical dynamic effects on reaction product outcomes, as well as use reactions with post-transition state bifurcations as case studies for understanding such effects. While at Bristol, I was also able to work with the David Glowacki research group, and our collaboration led to a project using dimensionality reduction to visualize reaction pathways.

Since April 2020, I have been working in the Pfaendtner Research Group (PRG) in Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington (back where I started my academic career!). I am currently exploring the mechanisms of silica oligomerization reactions as well as using transition path sampling (TPS) and aimless shooting to analyze reactions containing post-transition state bifurcations.

My Academic Map

Computational Tools I Employ

DFT and ab initio molecular structure calculations.

Classical and ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.

Data analysis and visualization in Python.