News | Vlaisavljevich Research Group - Department of Chemistry

January 2025

The Li Group hosted Nathan for a week at Washington University in Seattle. He installed ChronusQuantum on Argon and met with Xiaosong Li's students and postdocs. We look forward to running some calculations in CQ!

Bess attended the NNSA Transuranic Chemistry Center of Research Excellence (TruCORE) CSAC meeting in Atlanta.
The Vlaisavljevich Group welcomes three new members: Athrry, Cara, and Lillie. We look forward to seeing the awesome things they will do!

Bess attended the kick-off meeting for the EARTH Center at KU. Their US senator, the NSF director, and the KU band were also in attendance. It was a great event, and we can't wait to see what the center will do in the coming years!

The grad students hosted a Halloween costume contest! Our youngest member didn't have school and decided to join in on the fun. He even won "best overall" costume!
For two months, we hosted a visiting student from Spain, Joan Cardona. He is doing his PhD in Eliseo Ruiz's group but spent some time here learning about CASPT2 geometry optimizations. We hope he enjoyed his time here and a traditional Thanksgiving style meal.
Nathan attended the ACS Midwest Regional Meeting. He presented at talk in the Lanthanides and Actinides session. He also co-chaired the session with Samantha Kruse (Forbes Group).

Bess is presenting at the Chicago Regional Inorganic Colloquium in Madison, WI this month. She can't wait to talk about her work in collaboration with Scott Daly's group and researchers at LANL.

Sabyasachi officially moved to UIowa! We are really happy to have him back in the same office space!
The semester is underway! Bess is teaching graduate-level quantum mechanics and computational chemistry. She is getting to know the students and hopes they share her passion for how math can be used to predict chemical phenomena.

Bess and Sabyasachi head to Fort Collins, CO for ICCC next week. We are looking forward to it!
Nathan successfully defended his M.S. thesis! He gave a fantastic summary of his work, including his recent publication. It was nice to return to USD to give the defense in person. Nathan is all set to start as a PhD student at Iowa this August!

We welcome another undergraduate researcher to the group. Jenna Ringwald will be performing collaborative research with Scott Daly regarding Boron K-Edge XAS. We look forward to her doing great things!
Bess moved to Iowa!

Nathan moved to Iowa!
Christina graduated with her B.S. in Biochemistry! We are so proud of her. She will continue wrapping up some of her research this summer so keep an eye out for her next papers.
Kh Mahfuzul Alam defened his MS thesis! Mahfuz left the group for a job at Entegris and we were so proud to have him back to defend. Congrats Mahfuz!
Two group members won awards from the local ACS section! Nathan won the ACS Sioux Valley's 2024 Graduate Student Research Excellence Award, and Christina won the 2024 Outstanding Senior Undergraduate Student Award. Congratulations Nathan and Christina!
Christina won the University of South Dakota (USD) Chemistry department's premier award for a graduating senior, the Pardee Prize! She also was recognized with the Outstanding Senior Organic Chemistry Award. She won the Department's Physical Chemistry award last year. Congratulations Christina!
Christina graduated with her B.S. in Biochemistry! Congratulations Christina!

Bess visited Clark Atlanta University early this month to meet faculty and students. They are working in an NSF-PREC Center for Sustainable Polymers that partners with the NSF-CSP! It was a great visit and fun to learn about all the work being done at CAU.
Later in April, Bess and Jorge traveled to MN for the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers (NSF CSP) annual meeting. We celebrated 10 years of the center and enjoyed hearing talks about the impact the work has had on faculty, students, and start-ups!
Naomi got accepted to the Nuclear Chemistry Summer School (NCSS) at Brookhaven National Lab. She will spend 6-weeks there this summer prior to returning to USD for her senior year!
Nathan and Naomi participated in an Undergraduate Recruiting Event at Georgia Tech sponsored by the NNSA-supported TRUCoRE Center.
Sabyasachi, Nathan, Naomi, and Christina presented at the annual IdeaFest Symposium at USD. It was fun to share our work with the students and faculty on campus.

Check out the announcement from the Department about the NNSA-supported TRUCoRE center that both Scott Daly and I participate in! Read more here.
Bess, Sabyasachi, Nathan, and Christina headed to the Spring ACS meeting in New Orleans! We had a lot of fun sharing the work we are doing and connecting with collaborators/friends. We also went to the aquarium and ate good food!

Bess and Nathan traveled to Iowa City in February for the graduate student recruiting event. We had a lot of fun meeting with prospective students and current members of the department. We are looking forward to moving this summer!