Group News

  • October 2023:

    Austin successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Atsango!

  • August 2023:

    Group day out to Capitola and Monterey Bay including a visit to Monterey Bay Aquarium


  • July 2023:

    Tom, Nandini, and Scott arrange the 6th of their biennal "Quantum Effects in Condensed-Phase Systems" meetings in Telluride, CO.

  • June 2023:

    The group welcomes Uyen and Sebastian to the group for summer research.

  • June 2023:

    Tom is an organizer of the CECAM flagship school on Path Integral Quantum Mechanics at Tel Aviv University.

  • May 2023:

    Austin and Frank are both awarded poster prizes at the West Coast Theoretical Chemistry Meeting. Congratulations Austin and Frank!

  • February 2023:

    Michael successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Chen!


  • January 2023:

    Tom is an organizer of the Enhancing Science Courses by Integrating Python (ESCIP) workshop at Santa Clara University.

  • December 2022:

    For this year's group holiday party roast goose was the main menu item.


  • November 2022:

    Tom is the inaugural Hirschfelder Visitor at UW Madison.

  • October 2022:

    Arianna begins as a undergraduate researcher in the group.

  • May 2022:

    Michael is awarded a Centennial Teaching Assistant Award. Congratulations Michael!

  • May 2022:

    Austin is awarded a DARE fellowship. Congratulations Austin!


  • May 2022:

    Yuezhi accepts a faculty job at San Diego State University to begin in August 2022. Congratulations Prof. Mao!

  • May 2022:

    Group day out to San Francisco including the The Art of the Brick: LEGO Exhibit, dim sum for lunch in Chinatown, the Gold Rush escape room, and then finishing off the day with a round of mini-golf at Urban Putt.



  • December 2021:

    Group holiday party.



  • November 2021:

    Austin is awarded the Edward Curtis Franklin Award. Congratulations Austin!

  • November 2021:

    Group day out to the Kingdom of the Cats escape room followed by mini golf and Caribbean food.



  • November 2021:

    Tom gives the Henry Frank lectures at University of Pittsburgh - his first in person visit to a university in almost 2 years!

  • August 2021:

    Group dinner at Pizza Delfina's Summer Pig Roast.



  • July 2021:

    After 1.5 years of not using our old group coffee machine due to home working it's time for an upgrade.

  • June 2021:

    Tom, Nandini, and Scott organize the 5th Quantum Effects in Condensed-Phase Systems workshop. The workshop is run in a hybrid format with 8 faculty attending in person and 20 speaking virtually.

  • June 2021:

    Tom is an organizer of the virtual CECAM School Path Integral Quantum Mechanics: From the Basics to the Latest Developments.

  • June 2021:

    Group day out hiking at Windy Hill and El Corte de Madera.



  • February 2021:

    Michael is awarded a CMAD fellowship. Congratulations Michael!

  • January 2021:

    Tom is awarded the 2021 Early-Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry from the ACS PHYS Division.

  • January 2021:

    Michael is awarded the Weldon G. Brown Fellowship. Congratulations Michael!

  • November 2020:

    Yuezhi is awarded the Michael Wormit Award. Congratulations Yuezhi!

  • October 2020:

    Theoretical Chemistry Preview Day 2020. Thanks to Austin for being one of the organizers of this fantastic new event aimed at recruiting the next generation of excellent scientists.

  • August 2020:

    Tom is a member of the newly funded Cottrell Scholars Collaborative "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Age of COVID-19: A New STEM Pipeline Model that Grows Undergraduate Research at Minority-Serving Institutions via Collaboration, Personnel Exchange and Online Training". The goal of this collaborative is to expand opportunities for minority students to participate in prolonged research experiences early in their undergraduate studies by developing a new STEM pipeline model that combines high-quality and rigorous collaborative research with research exchanges for undergraduate students starting in their first year at historically Black or Hispanic-serving colleges and universities.

  • April 2020:

    Spencer is awarded a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program fellowship and accepts a position in the PhD program at the University of Chicago. Congratulations Spencer!

  • March 2020:

    Andres accepts a faculty job at University of Colorado Boulder to begin in January 2021. Congratulations Prof. Montoya-Castillo!

  • October 2019:

    Tom is an organizer of the Communicating Ideas Workshop sponsored by RCSA and held at the ACS headquarters in Washington D.C. where a series of expert speakers introduced tools, delivery methods, and skills to help the faculty and students who attended transform their scientific products and ideas into useful information, accessible for their colleagues, journalists, legislators, and the public.



  • October 2019:

    Tobias joins Bayer as a Research Scientist in computational molecular design.

  • August 2019:

    Tom gives the Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry Lecture at ACS San Diego.



  • April 2019:

    Joe successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Napoli!

  • July 2018:

    Tom is promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry with tenure.

  • April 2018:

    The group moves to the new Stanford theoretical chemistry space in the Keck building.









  • March 2018:

    Tom, Martin Head-Gordon, Eran Rabani and Joe Subotnik arrange the West Coast Theoretical Chemistry Symposium at Stanford consisting of 120 attendees, 12 speakers and 60 posters.

  • March 2018:

    Tobias and Andres are awarded poster prizes at the West Coast Theoretical Chemistry Symposium.

  • February 2018:

    Will accepts a faculty job at Chatham University to begin this summer. Congratulations Prof. Pfalzgraff!

  • December 2017 - Lab Holiday Party




  • July 2017:

    Tom and Scott host another of their biennial meetings on "Quantum Effects in Condensed-Phase Systems" in Telluride, CO.

  • July 2017:

    Tom, Michele, David, Ali and Sebastiano organize an ICTP workshop on "Understanding Quantum Phenomena with Path Integrals: From Chemical Systems to Quantum fluids and Solids" in Trieste, Italy.



  • June 2017:

    Will is awarded the Annual Reviews Prize in Physical Chemistry at the Stanford Chemistry commencement ceremony.

  • May 2017:

    Tom is awarded a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award.

  • March 2017:

    Andres is awarded a PCTC postdoctoral fellowship to speak at the Penn Conference in Theoretical Chemistry.

  • December 2016:

    Ondrej accepts a faculty job at Charles University to begin in 2017.

  • November 2016:

    Will successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Pfalzgraff!



  • November 2016:

    Tom receives an NSF CAREER award.

  • June 2016:

    Tom, Michele, Mariana and Mark organize the "CECAM School on Path Integral Quantum Mechanics: Theory, Simulation and Application" in Lausanne, Switzerland. Slides of the lectures can be downloaded from here



  • February 2016:

    Aaron accepts a faculty job at Dalhousie University to begin in 2017.

  • February 2016:

    Magnifica joins the group replacing Espresseria who had a very respectable output of over 8,000 cups.



  • December 2015:

    Lu's leaving meal and holiday drinks.





  • August 2015:

    Group wine tasting in Santa Cruz Mountains.





  • July 2015:

    Tom and Scott organize another of their biennal "Quantum Effects in Condensed-Phase Systems" meetings in Telluride, CO.



  • May 2015:

    Tom is awarded the H&S Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

  • April 2015:

    Lu accepts a faculty job at Rutgers University to begin in January 2016. Her faculty page can be found here.

  • April 2015:

    Lu, Michele and Tom's paper on quantum fluctuations and isotope effects in water is highlighted in the 2014 JCP Editors' Choice Collection .

  • March 2015:

    Aaron is awarded a PCTC postdoctoral fellowship to speak at the Penn Conference in Theoretical Chemistry.

  • February 2015:

    Aaron, Nora and Tom's paper showing how the mean field approach to quantum dynamics can be made much more accurate while also decreasing its computational cost is published in J. Chem. Phys.

  • February 2015:

    Tom is awarded a Cottrell Scholarship from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

  • February 2015:

    Joe is accepted to attend the Telluride School on Theoretical Chemistry in July.

  • January 2015:

    Christoph joins the group as a visiting graduate student from Dominik Marx's group at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum.

  • January 2015:

    In collaboration with the Boxer lab, Lu and Tom's paper on quantum delocalization of protons in an enzyme's active site is published in Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences.

  • December 2014 - Lab Holiday Party




  • October 2014:

    Ondrej joins the group.

  • September 2014:

    Lu, Michele and Tom's paper on quantum fluctuations and isotope effects in ab initio water is published in J. Chem. Phys.

  • September 2014:

    Will receives a Stanford Graduate Fellowship.

  • August 2014:

    Tom receives the ACS OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at the American Chemical Society's meeting in San Francisco.

  • July 2014:

    Will receives an outstanding poster award at the American Conference on Theoretical Chemistry in Telluride.

  • July 2014:

    Tom is awarded a Hellman Faculty Scholars Fellowship.

  • January 2014:

    Tom is awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.

  • December 2013:

    Tom and Lu receive an XSEDE grant on the Keeneland supercomputer for the study of hydrogen bond networks in biological systems.

  • 17th December 2013 - Lab Holiday Drinks with Collaborators





  • October 2013:

    Joe joins the group.

  • September 2013:

    Lu is appointed as a Fellow of the Center for Molecular Analysis and Design at Stanford University.

  • July 2013:

    Tom and Scott Habershon hold their first "Quantum effects in Condensed-phase Systems" meeting in Telluride.

  • July 2013:

    Aaron and Tom's paper introducing the MJ-GQME approach to perform efficient long time nonadiabatic dynamics is published in J. Chem. Phys.

  • July 2013:

    Tom, Aaron, and Will receive an XSEDE grant on the Stampede supercomputer to study electric field control of reactions.

  • January 2013:

    Michele and Tom's paper on efficiently calculating isotope effects is published in J. Chem. Phys.

  • 8th December 2012 - Lab Holiday Party






  • September 2012:

    Tom is awarded a Terman Fellowship.

  • September 2012:

    Lu joins the group.

  • September 2012:

    Aaron is appointed as a Fellow of the Center for Molecular Analysis and Design at Stanford University.

  • June 2012:

    Tom is one of the Lecturers at the CECAM Spring School on Path Integral Molecular Dynamics Simulations in Toulouse.

  • June 2012:

    David receives his Masters in Chemistry for his thesis: "Predicting Isotopic Fractionation in Water from Quantum Simulations".

  • 6th April 2012 - New Lab Space Complete

    The new lab is located on the top floor of the Mudd building: Room 317.










  • December 2011:

    Will joins the group.

  • September 2011:

    Aaron joins the group.

  • August 2011:

    David joins the group.

  • August 2011:

    The beginning.