So Hirata

So Hirata

Fellow: Awarded 2022
Field of Study: Chemistry

So Hirata is the Marvin T. Schmidt Professor of Chemistry at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He pushes the limits of quantitative chemical theories and computing technology for understanding and predicting the structures and properties of molecules, polymers, solids, and liquids. He advances quantum many-body theories and introduces theorems and conjecture on their mathematical structure. He develops numeric, symbolic, and parallel algorithms and software that make the fundamental equations of motion of chemistry tractable for accurate solutions. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Hewlett-Packard Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, and the Annual Medal of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, the most prestigious international award for quantum chemists under age 40. He is a coauthor of the U.S. Department of Energy’s award-winning NWChem computational chemistry software.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fellow

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