Division of Chemical Physics

DCP Home | Newsletters | December 2014

In this issue:

Dear Chemical Physics Colleagues,

We are very pleased to announce the results of the election of officers of the Executive Committee of the APS Division of Chemical Physics. The new officers are Tim Zwier (Chair of DCP) and Jeff Owrutsky (Member-of-Large). Please join us in congratulating them.

We are also delighted to announce five terrific Focus Sessions at the March 2-6 APS meeting in San Antonio, assembled by program chair Dave Chandler and his co-organizers. Please scroll down to take a look at them. We hope that you will be able to attend the Focus Sessions and engage in discussions with our many outstanding invited and contributed speakers and poster presenters. Of particular interest is the Wednesday award session, featuring our Plyler, Langmuir, and Broida Prize winners and our inaugural Student Thesis Award winners. The poster session will take place on Tuesday from 2-4 PM and our business meeting is on the same day at 5:45 PM in room 204B.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and hope that you will support our many efforts by becoming a member of DCP. Your membership and input make it possible for us to create focus sessions, provide travel and thesis and child care awards, and bring chemical physicists of all ages together at each March meeting. Please send us your comments and suggestions — we are eager to make DCP even better and broaden its scope.

Please join us for what promises to be our best DCP March Meeting yet! We look forward to seeing you in San Antonio.

Robert Gordon (secretary/treasurer) and Gil Nathanson (chair)
rjgordon@uic.edu and nathanson@chem.wisc.edu

Important Dates

APS March Meeting Early Bird Registration Deadline: 02 Jan 2015

Application Deadline for March Meeting Dependent Child Care Award: 28 Jan 2015

APS March Meeting Online Registration Deadline: 30 Jan 2015

APS March Meeting Hotel Reservation Deadline: 13 Feb 2015

Nomination Deadline for 2015 APS Fellowship Through DCP: 01 April 2015

Nomination Deadline for 2016 Plyler Prize: 01 Jul 2015

Nomination Deadline for 2016 DCP Doctoral Thesis Award: 01 Nov 2015

Election of DCP Officers

We are pleased to announce the election of Tim Zwier to the position of Vice Chair and Jeff Owrutsky to the position of Member-at-Large of the Division of Chemical Physics.

Winner and Finalists of the Inaugural DCP Doctoral Thesis Award Competition

The winner of the first DCP Doctoral Thesis Award is Dr. Alexander J. White for his dissertation, “Electron Transport, Energy Transfer, and Optical Response in Single Molecule Junctions,” which he wrote under the direction of Prof. Michael Gelperin the University of California, San Diego. The two finalists for this award are Dr. Jozef Lengyel for his dissertation, “Ice Nanoparticles in Molecular Beam: Nucleation and Reactivity,” which he wrote under the direction of Prof. Michal Fárník at the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry, Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, and Dr. Zhu Liang for her dissertation, “A Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Study of Atomic Carbon and Nitrogen on Pt(111),” which she wrote under the direction of Prof. Michael Trenary at the University of Illinois at Chicago. All three will present their work at the DCP Prize Symposium of the March Meeting in San Antonio on Wednesday, March 6, 2015, at 11:30 am in Room 204.

2014 DCP Fellows of the American Physical Society

We are pleased to congratulate the following newly-elected APS Fellows, who will be recognized at the DCP Prize Symposium at the APS March Meeting 2015 in San Antonio.

Donald Baer
For research and capability development that significantly advanced molecular-level understanding of environmentally important interfacial processes relevant to nanoparticle reactivity, mineral dissolution, and stress corrosion cracking.

Guanhua Chen
For his singular contributions in the development of quantum mechanical simulation methods for complex electronic systems, including O(N) methods for excited states and the multiscale QM/EM method for emerging electronics.

Bret Jackson
For outstanding contributions to the elucidation of gas-surface dynamics, including the development of quantum methods for describing reactive scattering and particle-substrate energy transfer, and studies of sticking, dissociative chemisorption and Eley-Rideal reactions.

Andrew Marcus
For his contribution to the development of linear and nonlinear fluorescence correlation spectroscopies, and their application to the study of the structure and dynamics of biochemical systems.

Spiridoula Matsika
For her contributions to understanding the dynamics of excited molecules around conical intersections and method development to calculate such at the highest levels of theory.

Christopher Mundy
For pioneering applications of Kohn-Sham density functional theory to further our understanding of complex processes that occur at the air-water interface.

Farid Salama
For the pioneering contributions in the development and application of spectroscopic tools for the laboratory study of interstellar and planetary molecules in astrophysically relevant environments.

Grzegorz Szamel
For his contributions to the understanding of glassy dynamics through computer simulations and fundamental theory.

Yoshitaka Tanimura
For his seminal contributions to the theoretical and computational studies of quantum dissipative dynamics using a hierarchial non-Markovian non-perturbative approach and for pioneering the field of coherent multi-dimensional optical spectroscopy of electronic and nuclear motions in molecules.

Sergei Tretiak
For seminal contributions to the theoretical chemistry of excited state dynamics in nanoscale materials and nonlinear optical response of molecular systems.

Winners of the DCP New Investigator Travel Award

Congratulations to the following winners of travel awards to attend the APS March Meeting 2015:

Deborah Barkley, Stony Brook
Rabi Khanal, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Andrew Kozbial, University of Pittsburgh
Mark Lucas, University of California, Riverside
Brett McGuire, CalTech
Jolene Mork, MIT
Patrick Tamukong, University of North Dakota
Vamsee Voora, University of Pittsburgh

DCP Prize Session at the APS March Meeting 2015

The 2015 Herbert P. Broida Prize will be awarded to Prof. Michael Ashfold at the Prize Symposium, which will be held on Wednesday, March 6, 2015, at 11:15 am in Room 204. Dr. Ashfold will give a talk in this session entitled “Molecular photofragmentation dynamics in the gas and condensed phase: similarities and differences.”

The 2015 Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics will be awarded to Prof. Jens K. Nørskov at the DCP Prize Symposium. Dr. Nørskov will give a talk in this session entitled “A predictive theory of transition metal surface catalysis.”

The 2015 Earl K. Plyler Prize will be awarded to Prof. Majed Chergui at the Prize Symposium. Dr. Chergui will give a talk in this session entitled “X-Ray and UV Studies of Molecular and Nano-Systems at the Atomic-Scale Resolutions of Time and Space.”

In addition, at this Symposium, Dr. Alexander White, the winner of the inaugural DCP Doctoral Thesis Award, will give a 36 minute talk about his doctoral research, and finalists Jozef Lengyel and Liang Zhu will each give 12 talks about their research.

Abstracts of these talks may be found at http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR15/Session/M27

DCP-Sponsored Focus Sessions at the APS March Meeting 2015

DCP is sponsoring a number of focus sessions at the March Meeting in San Antonio. A detailed description of the various sessions may be found on the DCP web page.

Monday, March 2

Room 204A
Nonadiabatic Dynamics: New Insights from Experiment and Theory I
Nonadiabatic Dynamics: New Insights from Experiment and Theory II
Water and Liquid Dynamics

Room 204B
Emerging Ultrafast Technologies for Chemical and Materials Physics: From THz to X-ray I
Emerging Ultrafast Technologies for Chemical and Materials Physics: From THz to X-ray II
Chemical Physics of Clusters: Bridging from Å-scale Clusters to Micron-scale Aerosol Particles I

Tuesday, March 3

Room 204A
At the Interface of Molecules and Materials I
Nonadiabatic Dynamics: New Insights from Experiment and Theory III
At the Interface of Molecules and Materials II

Room 204B
Emerging Ultrafast Technologies for Chemical and Materials Physics: From THz to X-ray III
Chemical Physics of Clusters: Bridging from Å-scale Clusters to Micron-scale Aerosol Particles II
Chemical Physics of Clusters: Bridging from Å-scale Clusters to Micron-scale Aerosol Particles III

Wednesday, March 4

Room 204A
At the Interface of Molecules and Materials III
Nonadiabatic Dynamics: New Insights from Experiment and Theory IV

Room 204B
Solvation of Ions and Electrons I
Award Symposium
Chemical Physics of Clusters: Bridging from Å-scale Clusters to Micron-scale Aerosol Particles IV

Thursday, March 5

Room 204A
At the Interface of Molecules and Materials IV
Computational Applications and Methods I
Computational Applications and Methods II

Room 204B
Solvation of Ions and Electrons II
Solvation of Ions and Electrons III
Charge Transport and Plasmonics

Friday, March 6

Room 204A
Surfaces, Interfaces, Colloids and Catalysis I
Surfaces, Interfaces, Colloids and Catalysis II

DCP Business Meeting

The Division Meeting at the APS March Meeting 2015 will held on Tuesday, March 3 at 5:45 PM in room 204B. All are welcome!

2015 APS Fellowship Nominations

We encourage the nomination for fellowship of deserving candidates. Nominations for 2015 APS Fellowship to be considered by the DCP Fellowship Committee should be made before the deadline, April 1, 2015. Please note the new, extended date for nominations. Instructions for submitting a nomination are included on the APS Fellows web page.