PI: Dr. Anastassia Alexandrova

Anastassia is Charles W. Clifford Jr. Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and professor of Materials Science and Engineering. She obtained her B.S./M.S. degree with highest honors from Saratov State University (Russia), in 2000, and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Physical Chemistry from Utah State University, in 2005. She was a Postdoctoral Associate, and then an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. Anastassia joined the Faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA, and CNSI in 2010. She is a recipient of numerous awards, such as NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Fellowship 2013, DARPA Young Faculty Award 2011, Fulbright Fellowship 2016, ACS WCC Rising Star Award 2016, 2020 ACS Phys Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry, 2021 Max Planck-Humboldt medal, as well as UCLA undergraduate research mentorship award 2018, and 2019 distinguished teaching award (the highest honor for teaching given in UCLA). In 2024 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Tel: +1 (310) 825-3769
Email: ana@chem.ucla.edu

Shobhit obtained his Ph.D. from Michigan Technological University, group of Prof. Christo Christov.

Project: Understanding the role of the protein scaffold in enzymatic catalysis.
E-mail: here

Gwen obtained his Ph.D. from UCSB, group of Prof. Vojtech Vlcek.

Project: Topological catalysis.
E-mail: here

Yonghyuk obtained his Ph.D. in the gorup of Karsten Reuter, Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany.

Project: Dynamics driving heterogeneous catalysis: activity, selectivity, and degradation. Machine learning models for catalysis.
E-mail: here

Yulan obtained her Ph.D. in the gorup of Peijun Hu, in Queen's University Belfast, UK.

Project: Reactive CO₂ capture. Heterogeneous catalysis.
E-mail: here

Robert Lavroff, Graduate Student, NSF Fellow

Rob graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Chemical Engineering.

Project: Strongly correlated functional materials and interfaces, development of embedding electronic structure techniques. Rob is co-supervised with Dr. Denis Usvyat (Humboldt University, Berlin).
Email: here

Winston Gee, Graduate Student

Winston graduated from the Westmont College. He is jointly supervised with Abby Doyle.

Project: Dynamic electrocatalytic interfaces, CO2RR, reactive CO₂ capture.
Email: here

Will Laderer, Graduate Student, NSF-UCLA Quantum Science and Engineering Fellow

Will got his B.S. degree in Stony Brook University.

Project: Functional quantum materials.
Email: here

Pavel Rublev, Graduate Student

Pavel got his B.S./M.S. degree in Moscow State University, he then worked on his Ph.D. with Prof. Alexander Boldyrev at Utah State University, and now continues in our group.

Project: TBD
Email: here

Taras Khvorost, Graduate Student, NSF-UCLA Quantum Science and Engineering Fellow

Taras got his B.S. degree in St. Petersburg State University, and his M.S. in ITMO University - group of Evgeny Pidko.

Project: Chemistry of QIS.
Email: here

Pujan Ajmera, Graduate Student, NSF-UCLA Quantum Science and Engineering Fellow

Pujan got his B.S. degree in the University of Michigan.

Project: Role of electric and magnetic fields in governing quantum processes in biology.
Email: here

Shawn Chiu, Graduate Student

Shawn got his B.S. degree in Columbia University.

Project: Reactive CO₂ capture.
Email: here

Anubhav Goswami, Graduate Student

Anubhav got his B.S. degree in IISc Bengaluru, India.

Project: Electric fields in natural and artificial enzymes
Email: here

Daniel Guion, Graduate Student

Daniel got his B.S. degree in the University of Washington, and spent a few years in biotech industry before joining UCLA.

Project: Electric fields across enzyme classes
Email: here

Ryan Choi, Graduate Student

Ryan got his B.S. degree in the University of Chicago, where he did research with David Mazziotti.

Project: Molecular qubits and quantum sensors
Email: here

Ashley Petersen, Graduate Student

Ashley got his B.S. degree in the Villanova University, where she did research in organic chemistry.

Project: Electrostatics in biology: from enzymes to antimicrobials.
Email: here

Ferdawss Ihiri, Graduate Student

Ferdawss got her B.S. degree in the College of Wooster, majoring in chemistry and minoring in computer science. She is jointly supervised by Miguel Garcia-Garibay.

Project: Photoactive molecular crystals
Email: here

Junwei He, Graduate Student

Junwei got his B.S. degree from Peking University in China. He spent some time in Rice University, group of Boris Yakobson.

Project: Topoloical materials interfaces for catalysis and electronic devices
Email: here

Hiran Jayasekara, Undergraduate Student

Project: Articial metalloenzyme design

Jiayi (Bonnie) Qian, Undergraduate Student

Project: Electric fields in enzymes

Sophie Kogan, Undergraduate Student

Project: Chemical bonding in materials

Cornelius

Project: Oxytocin generation

Group Alumni:

Dr. Harry Morgan (postdoc, 2024) => Professor in the University of Manchester, UK
Zisheng Zhang (Ph.D. 2024) => Stanford Energy Fellow
Santiago Vargas (Ph.D. 2024) => Hoffman Fellow in Berkeley
Claire Dickerson (Ph.D. 2024) => Scientist at HRL
Patricia Poths (Ph.D. 2023) => Humboldt Fellow at Fritz-Haber Institute, Berlin, Germany, group of Karsten Reuter.
Nathaniel Johnston (M.S. 2023) => school teacher
Cecilia Chang (M.S. 2023)
Tom Hong (B.S. 2023) => Ph.D. student in applied math at Yale University.
Edison Cummings (B.S. 2023, depatmental honors) => Ph.D. student in the University of Washington.
Samuel Greenbank (exchange undergraduate student, 2023) => back to U.Manchester, UK.
Jack Fulller (Ph.D. 2021) => Postdoc at PNNL.
Dr. Daniel Bim (postdoc, 2018-2020) => Assistant Professor in Dept. of Physical Chemistry at UCT Prague.
Matthew Hennefarth (B.S. 2020, Staff Scientist 2020-2021) => graduate student at University of Chicago, group of Laura Gagliardi.
Kirill Shumilov (B.S. 2020, M.S. 2021) => graduate student at University of Washington, group of Xiaosong Li.
David Reilley (Ph.D. 2021) => engineer at QSimulate.
Borna Zandkarimi (Ph.D. 2020) => Postdoc at UCSD, group of Joel Yuen => Amgen.
Dr. Han Guo (postdoc, 2018-2020) => engineer in pharma, Beijing, China.
Dr. Julen Munarriz (postdoc, 2019-2020) => Assistant Professor in University of Oviedo, Spain.
Dr. Sandra Brown (Postdoc, 2019-2020) => Assistant Professor in Harvey Mudd College.
Hang Yin (B.S. 2019) => graduate student at UCSD.
Huanchen Zhai (Ph.D. 2019) => Postdoc in Caltech, group of Garnet Chan.
Addis Fuhr (Ph.D. 2019, co-advised with Philippe Sautet and Victor Klimov) => MITRE => Staff Scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Jiyuan Liu (CSC Scholar, 2016-2018) => continued his Ph.D. research in East China Institute of Science and Technology in Shanghai.
PJ Robinson (BS 2018) => PhD student in Columbia University, group of David Reichman => Postdoc in Harvard, group of Jonhoo Lee.
Dr. Elisa Jimenez-Izal (Postdoc 2014-2018) => Ikerbasque Fellow => Assistant Professor, DIPC, Donostia, Basque Country, Spain.
Amanda Morgenstern (co-supervised student from Colorado School of Mines; advisor - Mark Eberhart; Ph.D. 2017) => Assistant Professor in Colorado University, Colorado Springs.
Daniel Hartfield (MS 2017) => highschool teacher of chemistry.
Mai-Anh Ha (PhD 2017) => Directors Postdoctoral Fellow, and then staff in NREL.
Michael Nechay (PhD 2017) => Data Scientist at Dell.
Caleb Huang (undergraduate reseracher) => post-BS program at NIH.
Zhihao Cui (CSST Summer student 2016) => PhD student in Caltech, group of Garnet Chan.
Raymond Wang (CSST Summer student 2015) => graduate student in Northwestern University, group of Toru Shiozaki.
Crystal Valdez (PhD 2015) => Postdoc in Stanford, group of Prof. Ed Solomon, then in Pfizer.
Anjan Nandula (MS 2015) => engineer in WorldQuant.
Dr. Jonny Dadras (Postdoc, 2012-2014) => Postdoc in Caltech, group of William Goddard.
Dr. Tony Smith (Postdoc jointly with Prof. Radu, UCLA Medical School, 2012-2014) => data scientist in Teradata => Google.
Dr. Jin Zhang (Postdoc, 2010-2013) => Engineer in Google.
Lu Shen (MS 2014) => PhD student in UCLA, Physics.
Dr. Manuel Sparta (Postdoc, 2010-2012) => Postdoc at Max Planck Institute, Mulheim an der Ruhr, group of Frank Neese.
Mioy Huynh (B.S. 2012, URFP and CARE Research Fellow, 2010-2012) => Ph.D. student in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, group of Sharon Hammes-Schieffer; then lecturer of chemistry at Yale University; then Assistant Professor at Clarmont College.
Diana Yu (B.S. 2012, Kivelson Fellow, 2011-2012) => Ph.D. student in UC Merced, then faculty in Douglas College, BC, Canada.
Natalya Burmistrova (visiting scholar, 2012) => Assistant Professor in Saratov University, Russia.
Alina Sergeeva (visiting graduate student, 2012) => Postdoctoal Associate at Columbia University.