June 2023: Selin Bac presented a talk titled “Beyond Conventional Transition State Theory in Catalysis: Applications of Matrix Completion Methods”! She also be presented a poster!
May 2023: Kareesa sucessfully defended their thesis titled “Molecular Modelling of Organic Photoredox Catalysis for CO2 Reduction”! Our second doctor from the group!
Apr 2023: Kareesa was awarded the Best Research Assistant award for the MFD Award Ceremony!
March 2023: Sophia Kassabian presented a poster at the Annual MFD Symposium!
March 2023: Selin Bac presented at the Annual MFD Symposium and won the best graduate poster award!
January 2023: Kareesa is teaching the upperdivision elective titled “Physical Properties of Polymers” as a Future Faculty Teaching Fellow through USC’s Center for Excellence in teaching!
January 2023: We welcome Pallavi Sarkar into our group as a Postdoc!
November 2022: Nick, Selin, and Kareesa each presented at the AIChE National Conference!
August 2022: We welcome Kaustubh Rane into our group as a 1st year PhD Student in Chemical Engineering!
August 2022: We welcome Usama Saleem into our group as a 1st year PhD Student in Chemical Engineering!
June 2022: Selin and Nick will be hosting two high school students through USC’s SHINE summer program!
June 2022: Kareesa Kron attended the Gordon Research Seminar and Conference in Catalysis and presenting a poster for their work. They also won the WISE travel award to fund their attendance!
May 2022: Dr. Sharada and PhD candidates Selin Bac Bilgi, Nicholas Humphrey, and Kareesa Kron all traveled to New York to present their research at the National American Catalysis Society 27th Annual Meeting. Kareesa also recieved the Kokes Travel Award!
April 2022: Stephen and Sophia presented their research at the Viterbi Undergraduate Poster Symposium. Additional congratulations to Stephen who won 2nd place for best poster presentation in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science!
April 2022: Congrats to Selin for passing her qualifying exam and becoming a PhD Candidate!
April 2022: Congrats to Zhenzhuo on her successful defense, our first in the group!
April 2022: Congrats to Stephen on winning the NSF GRFP and on his admittance to several PhD Programs, including UC Berkeley where he will start his PhD in the Fall!
March 2022: PhD Students Selin Bac Bilgi, Nicholas Humphrey, Kareesa Kron, and Zhenzhuo Lan presented their work at the ACS National Meeting in San Diego!
March 2022: Congrats to Nick for passing his qualifying exam and becoming a PhD Candidate!
March 2022: PhD Students Selin Bac Bilgi, Nicholas Humphrey, and Zhenzhuo Lan presented posters at the MFD Symposium along with undergraduate students Stephen Quiton and Sophia Kassabian. Kareesa presented a talk and won two Best Oral Presentation: Special Mention’s! Selin Bac won an award for best graduate poster presentation! Congrats to everyone on their posters and talks!
Jan 2021: We welcome our first Postdoc, Abhilash to the group!
Nov 2021: Members of the Sharada lab traveled to Boston to present their research! Kareesa won Best poster presentation for their poster in Chemical Reaction Engineering!
Oct 2021: Kareesa presented their research at oSTEM in a poster and a symposium!
Oct 2021: We welcome Maria to the group!
Sept 2021: We welcome Sophia to the group!
Sept 2021: Congratulations Stephen on being awarded the Fall 2021 Provost’s Research Fellowship!
Aug 2021: Selin, Nick, and Kareesa all presented their research at the Suncat Summer institute!
July 2021: Kareesa hosted high school student April Ramos through the summer YRP Program! Kareesa also attended ACS Green Summer School and presented their research in a poster.
June 2021: Selin is mentoring Justine through USC’s SHINE summer research program!
June 2021: Stephen starts his role as a Physical Simulations Intern at a startup in LA called Entos (entos.ai), which utilizes machine learning technologies for faster quantum chemistry computations.
June 2021: Zhenzhuo Lan starts an internship at Facebook as a Software Engineer Intern in Machine Learning!
May 2021: Alicia and Andres presented their hard work at the USC CURVE (center of undergraduate research in viterbi engineering) Research Symposium! Their work is supported by the USC CURVE fellowship.
May 2021: Jacob Toney won the Charles J. Rebert Chemical Engineering Outstanding Student Award and graduated. Jacob is going to spend a gap year working at SpaceX before heading to a PhD Program at MIT!
Apr 2021: In addition to presenting a talk at the Spring ACS Meeting, Kareesa K. also passed their quals and is officially a PhD Candidate.
Feb 2021: PhD Students Selin Bac Bilgi, Nicholas Humphrey, Kareesa Kron, and Zhenzhuo Lan presented at the MFD Symposium along with undergraduate students Stephen Quiton and Jacob Toney. Jacob Toney won an award for best undergraduate oral presentation and Stephen Quiton won an award for best undergraduate poster! Congrats to everyone on their posters and talks!
Feb 2021: Kareesa K. gave a WISE STEM Bytes Talk about their work!
Jan 2021: Rachelle Ehlesson won the WiSE Aerospace Corporation Research Fellowship and its associated summer internship!
Jan 2021: We welcome Andres, Ryan and Alicia to the group!
Nov 2020: Stephen won the student poster award at AIChE! This resulted in Stephen going on to give a talk at the national level for the AIChE Annual Student Conference.
Oct 2020: Dr. Sharada and Kareesa taught a webinar for high school students focused on utilizing IQMol to teach environmental science and chemistry students about the mechanisms of the greenhouse gas effect. The webinar and accompanying lesson plan can be found on the WChE website here!
Sept 2020: Jacob and Stephen received the Provost’s Research Fellowship for Fall 2020.
Sept 2020: We welcome Rachelle into the group!
Sept 2020: Kareesa’s
publication was recently featured on the USC Viterbi website. Samantha Gomez’s participation as a high school sudent is particularly impressive!
July 2020: Congrats to Zhenzhuo Lan for passing Quals!
June 2020: Selin started mentoring Mitchell B. through the Viterbi Summer Research Program.
Stephen was awarded the prestigious 2020 Barry Goldwater Scholarship! Congratulations!
Kareesa won “Best Graduate Poster” and a cash prize at the 14th Annual Mork Family Depart Research Symposium for their work exploring the kinetics of CO2 reduction via organic photoredox catalysts!
On March 3, several group members presented at the 14th Annual Mork Family Department Research Symposium. Zhenzhuo gave a talk on her research into linear free energy relationships for catalyst design. Nick, Kareesa, Stephen, and Jacob presented posters describing their research and had lots of interesting conversations with faculty and fellow students!
On November 23rd, the group gathered at Shoreline Aquatic Park in Long Beach with friends for a picnic to celebrate previous work. Not only was there lots of tasty food and fun music, but Dr. Sharada’s parents also joined us in the nice weather!
Sept 2019: We welcome Pranesh to the group!
Aug 2019: Shaama presents an overview of limitations of DFT in transition metal catalysis at the ACS Symposium on exploring transition metal chem and spectroscopy with quantum chemistry in San Diego CA
Aug 2019: We welcome Selin to the group!
Aug 2019: Zhenzhuo presented her work at the Pacific Coast Catalysis Society meeting and at SUNCAT Summer School
July 2019: Samantha presented her summer work at the YRP Summer Research Symposium
June 2019: Shaama presented group’s work on inverted Hammett analysis at the NAM meeting in Chicago
June 2019: We received 1,234,634.0 SUs from NSF’s XSEDE for studying the dynamic behavior of atomically dispersed catalysts (July 2019 – June 2020)
June 2019: We welcome Allyson to the group for the summer through Viterbi’s SURE program! We also welcome Samantha to the group for the summer through the Young Researchers Program!
May 2019: We welcome Vijey to the group for the summer through Viterbi’s IUSSTF program!
April 2019: We receive 1-year support from USC’s Undergraduate Research Associates Program for ligand-driven design of copper-oxo complexes
April 2019: We receive 1-year funding (July 2019 – Jun 2020) from USC’s Zumberge Fund Individual Grant Program for carrying out active site dynamics in atomically dispersed catalysts
April 2019: We welcome Yichen and Yujia to the group!
April 2019: Shaama presents mechanistic research on CH activation at the ACS Spring Meeting in Orlando, FL
March 2019: Shaama receives Supplemental Faculty Support from WiSE
Jan 2019: Jacob is awarded the USC Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Oct 2018: We welcome Stephen to the group!
Oct 2018: Shaama speaks to high schools students in the Saturday Academy (by Neighborhood Academic Initiative) about supercomputing in chemistry
Sep 2018: The group’s first paper is accepted at Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics as a 2018 HOT article!! Congrats, Zhenzhuo! Read the paper on using barrier responses to probe CH activation mechanisms in enzyme-inspired catalysts here
Jul 2018: Shaama leads a discussion and presents the group’s work on dicopper kinetics and leads a discussion at the Gordon Research Conference on Computational Chemistry in Mt. Snow, VT
Jul 2018: Shaama speaks to high school SHINE students about the joys of computational research!
Jul 2018: We welcome Kareesa and Nick to the group!
May 2018: Shaama presents a poster on single atom catalyst design work at the 2018 AFOSR Molecular Dynamics/Theoretical Chemistry program review in Albuquerque, NM
May 2018: Shaama presents CH activation work at the Third Annual Theoretical Chemistry Conference at Caltech
Apr 2018: We are growing! Nicholas and Kareesa will be joining the PhD program in Fall 2018. We also welcome Bipeng to the group
Mar 2018: First talk from the group! Shaama presents mechanistic research on CH activation at the ACS Spring Meeting in New Orleans, LA
Jan 2018: We welcome Jacob to the group!
Jan 2018: Shaama’s postdoctoral work on nontraditional routes for electrochemical ammonia synthesis is published in PCCP
Dec 2017: We have our own compute nodes on USC HPC!
Dec 2017: Shaama receives Supplemental Faculty Support from WiSE
Nov 2017: We welcome Tanya, Sathvika, and Miranda to the group!
Nov 2017: Shaama is a panelist on the WiSE Career panel, and shares her experience on preparing for academic jobs
Nov 2017: Shaama shares her research with USC’s Department of Chemistry at the Super-theory Seminar hosted by the Krylov group
Oct 2017: Shaama presents her recent work on DFT benchmarking for surface chemistry at the AIChE Annual Meeting in Minneapolis
Oct 2017: Shaama receives travel support from the Jr Faculty Professional Development Fund
Oct 2017: Shaama interacts with high school chemistry students about differences between physical and chemical changes as part of USC’s Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI)
Sep 2017: We welcome Joe to the group!
Sep 2017: Shaama’s postdoctoral work on benchmarking functionals for surface chemistry is ACS Editor’s Choice in JPCC
Aug 2017: We are excited to host Prof. Philippe Sautet (UCLA) as the first speaker in the 2017-18 Distinguished Lecture Series
Aug 2017: We welcome the first member, Zhenzhuo! She receives the 2-year Graduate Fellowship
Jul 2017: Shaama attends the ASEE Summer School for early-career ChemE faculty and presents a poster on peer review in the classroom