Prof. Anna Krylov
Anna Krylov is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California working in the area of theoretical and computational quantum chemistry. She received her M.Sc. in Chemistry from Moscow State University and her Ph.D from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon completing her Ph.D. in 1996, she joined Prof. Martin HeadGordon's group at the University of California, Berkeley, as a postdoctoral research associate. In 1998 she joined the Department of Chemistry at USC. She has co-authored more than 120 publications and has delivered more than 130 invited lectures. She received numerous prizes, including the WATOC (World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists) 2007 Dirac Medal for her "outstanding research on new methods in electronic structure theory for the description of bond-breaking, in conjunction with the spin-flip method". She also received the 2012 Theoretical Chemistry Award from the Physical Chemistry division of ACS. Professor Krylov has served on several editorial boards, organised multiple symposia and is a board member of WATOC and ISTCP. Anna is also on the Board of Directors of Q-Chem Inc, one of the world's leading ab initio quantum chemistry programs.
Molecules and light: The story of life, death, and our quest for knowledge
Abstract Interactions between molecules and light are essential to life on Earth and chemistry in space. They play a key role in the natural and artificial harvesting of solar energy that powers our planet. On the other hand, light can damage living organisms and materials by producing electronically excited and open-shell molecular species. Interactions between molecules and light enable us to study the world around us whether we are using ordinary visual perception to see objects on a macroscopic scale, spectroscopy to examine objects on a microscopic scale or far out in space, or we are interrogating processes in live organisms with atomic-level resolution. This lecture will highlight quantum chemical aspects of the interaction of molecules with light and illustrate the role of predictive theoretical tools in developing better bioimaging probes.
Ab initio approaches to electronically excited and open-shell species: Success stories and open issues
Abstract Open-shell and electronically excited species are ubiquitous in chemistry, yet their theoretical description is difficult due to inherent electronic degeneracies. This lecture will review successful approaches to ab initio modelling of multi-configurational wave-functions focusing on the equation-ofmotion coupled-cluster (EOM-CC) family of methods. Existing challenges and current developments will be discussed, in particular, the extension of EOM-CC to metastable electronic states (i.e., resonances).
Prof. Spiridoula Matsika
Spiridoula Matsika received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Ohio State University in 2000. After completing her Ph.D. she spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. In 2003 she was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Temple University in Philadelphia, promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry in 2009. Spiridoula Matsika was a recipient of the Presidential Fellowship at Ohio State University, and in 2005 received the National Science Foundation CAREER award. She has published 60 peer reviewed journal articles, including review articles, and book chapters, and has presented 72 invited lectures at conferences and universities. She has supervised several postdoctoral fellows, Ph.D., M.Sc. and undergraduate students in research through her tenure at Temple University. Her research focuses on the theoretical description of nonadiabatic events and conical intersections in molecular systems.
What molecules do when they get excited
When molecules interact with light they absorb energy and become excited reactive species. The transformations that occur following the absorption of light are important in life, chemistry, and solar energy production. In biology and medicine of particular importance is the interaction of UV radiation with DNA and RNA, which may lead to photochemical damage, and eventually cancer. Although photochemical damage takes place in these macromolecules, its frequency is reduced by their inherent ability to protect themselves by transforming the harmful UV radiation into harmless heat. This lecture will discuss how we use quantum chemistry to understand the photostability of DNA.
Quantum chemical studies of photoinitiated events in biological molecules
The theoretical description of photophysical and photochemical processes in molecules is challenging, since it requires accurate description of excited states and their potential energy surfaces away from the Franck Condon region. Nonadiabatic events are also essential for the description of photoinitiated processes. This talk will present progress in the quantum mechanical description of photophysical and photochemical processes, focusing on biological molecules.