The Almløf-Gropen Lecturer of 2014 is Prof. Leo Radom, School of Chemistry and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology, University of Sydney.
Prof. Radom is one of the world's leading computational chemists—he has published more than 500 articles, with an H-index of 84. He gives highly enjoyable talks, accessible to a broad audience of chemists. For more information, see attached flyer with abstract and his home page
Adventures In Free Radical Chemistry: A Computational Approach
Summary
Chemistry has traditionally been an experimental science. However, the advent of powerful and inexpensive computers and the development of highly efficient computer algorithms have opened the way for a viable alternative approach to chemistry: chemistry by computer. We use such computations, based on the laws of quantum mechanics, to determine the structures of molecules and to help understand how molecules react with one another. In this talk, I will begin with a non-technical outline of what this aspect of computational chemistry is all about. The main part of my talk will then be devoted to our use in recent years of computational chemistry to study the stabilities and reactions of free radicals. Because radicals are reactive species, they are difficult to study experimentally, so this is an area where theory potentially has a useful role to play.
Guest lecture from Prof. Ursula Rothlisberger
Note that — Immediately after Prof. Radom’s talk, Prof. Ursula Rothlisberger, Federal Insititute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland will deliver her guest lecture “Lessons from Nature: Computational Design of Biomimetic Systems and Processes”.