Program: Physical Chemistry
Research Advisor: Dr. Sophya Garashchuk

Before First Year

• Copenhaver Fellow under Professor Vitaly Rassolov.

Second Year

• Poster presentation at the Second Annual EPSCoR Conference.
• Served as a judge at the USC Science and Engineering Fair (also in 3rd and 5th years).

Fifth Year

• Received the Lipscomb Award for the poster/talk “Modeling enzymatic proton transfer with quantum trajectories” at the USC Graduate Symposium.

After Graduation

Accepted a position as Assistant Professor with the Department of Chemistry at Alma College in Alma, MI.

Graduate Timeline

First Year

• Joined Prof. Sophya Garashchuk’s research group.
• Teaching assistant in physical chemistry lab and honors general chemistry lab.
• Provided tutoring to undergraduate physical chemistry students.
• Took graduate-level courses: Quantum Chemistry, Spectroscopy and Molecular Structure, Biosynthesis of Macromolecules, Statistical Mechanics, Multiscale Modeling.

Second Year

• Passed oral and written comprehensive research plan.
• Passed original research proposal.
• Research collaboration at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Third Year

• Took Computational Math II.
• Presented a physical chemistry divisional seminar.
• Poster presentation at SETCA 2012.
• Participated in USC Chemistry Outreach program.
• Attended workshops on computational and electronic materials.

Fourth Year

• Presented at organic chemistry seminar series.
• Awarded travel grant for Advances in Quantum Chemistry conference.
• Teaching assistant for undergraduate physical chemistry.
• Mentored a high school student through the SPRI program.
• Presented at SETCA 2013.

Fifth Year

• Developed a new undergraduate lab experiment.
• Mentored a Magellan Scholar undergraduate.
• Presented at APS national conference.
• Wrote and defended dissertation.

Representative Publications

• Wang, Mazzuca, Garashchuk, Jakowski. Hybrid Quantum Trajectory/Electronic Structure DFTB approach. XSEDE Conference, 2014.
• Mazzuca, Garashchuk, Jakowski. Proton transfer in soybean lipoxygenase-1. Chem. Phys. Lett. 2012.
• Garashchuk, Mazzuca, Vazhappilly. Quantum trajectory representation of wavefunctions. J. Chem. Phys. 2011.