Research interests

I am a theoretical chemist interested in how molecules are shaped by their surroundings. Much effort in quantum chemistry is devoted to improving the description of molecules in isolation. My work is concerned with connecting these descriptions to “the outside world”: solvent effects, high pressure, magnetic fields, light, and nearby surfaces. Such environments can strongly affect molecular spectra, reaction pathways, excited states, and many other chemical properties.

A central theme of my research is the coupling between electronic and nuclear motion. This coupling is especially important in photochemistry, different types of spectroscopy, and spin-dependent phenomena. In my current work, I develop methods to study how molecular motion, chirality, and spin are connected through non-adiabatic quantities such as the Berry curvature. This allows me to investigate effects such as vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) and chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS), with the long-term goal of predicting how realistic molecular environments control spectra, electron transport, and chemical reactivity.