The Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois
Physical Chemistry Faculty
Physical Chemistry at Illinois offers a broad range of research opportunities at the interface of chemistry, physics, and the allied disciplines of materials science and biology. Graduate students interested in physical chemistry can work with any Faculty Research Advisor in the Department of Chemistry and are encouraged to visit the graduate program website listed to the right of this page.
| PROFESSOR | INTERESTS |
|---|---|
| Dana D. Dlott | ultrafast infrared spectroscopy, protein dynamics, laser shock waves and laser ablation in biology |
| Thom H. Dunning, Jr. | development of techniques for the accurate solution of the electronic Schrödinger equation; the use of state-of-the-art computational approaches to understand and predict the structure, energetics and reactivity of molecules. |
| Robert B. Gennis | structure and function of membrane proteins; mechanism of proton pumping by respiratory oxygen reductases; enzymology; bioenergetics |
| Steve Granick | in vivo and in vitro biophysics; complex fluids; single molecules, particles, and advanced imaging |
| Martin Gruebele | dynamics of complex chemical systems studied by laser spectroscopy and computational theory; current projects include fast protein folding, and control of energy flow in highly excited organic molecules |
| Taekjip Ha | |
| Sharon Hammes-Schiffer | electron, proton, and proton-coupled electron transfer reactions in solution, proteins, and electrochemistry; hybrid quantum-classical molecular dynamics, non-Born-Oppenheimer electronic structure methods, nonadiabatic dynamics of photoinduced processes, molecular electrocatalysts, enzyme and ribozyme mechanisms. |
| So Hirata | electronic and vibrational many-body theory for molecules, polymers, and solids; computer algebra for quantum chemistry |
| Prashant K. Jain | nanoplasmonics and nano-optics, near-field manipulation of photophysics and
photochemistry, super-resolution imaging of active sites in heterogeneous
catalysis, imaging phase transformations in single nanodomains, artificial
photosynthesis |
| Deborah E. Leckband | nanomechanics of biomolecules, cell adhesion, biomaterials, tissue engineering |
| Zaida (Zan) Luthey-Schulten | statistical methods of protein folding - thermodynamics and kinetics; design of optimized energy functions for protein structure prediction; structural genomics of metabolic pathways. |
| Nancy Makri | theoretical quantum dynamics of large molecules and condensed phase systems, with applications to relaxation, charge transfer reactions, and quantum control of nanostructures |
| Benjamin J. McCall | astrochemistry, and the study of molecular structure and intramolecular dynamics using high-resolution spectroscopy |
| Eric Oldfield | drug discovery targeting infectious diseases and cancer; synthesis; spectroscopy; computational chemistry |
| Philip W. Phillips | |
| Chad M. Rienstra | solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (SSNMR) instrumentation and pulse sequence methodology; protein structure and conformational dynamics; applications to membrane proteins |
| John A. Rogers | electroactive polymers, plastic electronics, microfluidics, elastomers, soft lithography, photonics |
| Klaus J. Schulten | structure, dynamics, electrostatics and mechanisms of biological macromolecules; magnetochemistry, mechanisms of NMR tomography, photosynthesis; retinal proteins |
| Kenneth S. Schweizer | statistical mechanical theory of soft materials including polymers, colloids, liquid crystals, nanoparticles, rubber networks, glasses and gels |
Physical Area Allied Faculty
| Andrew Gewirth | Gregory S. Girolami |
| Yi Lu | Catherine J. Murphy |
| Ralph Nuzzo | Jonathan V. Sweedler |
| Kenneth S. Suslick | Richard Perry |
| Alison Fout | Joaquín Rodríguez-López |
* denotes affiliate from outside the chemistry department
