Two New Faculty Join Department of Chemistry
It is with great pleasure that the Department of Chemistry welcomes two new members to its faculty, Professor Pinghua Liu in biochemistry and Professor Feng Wang in theoretical and computational chemistry.
Professor Liu received his Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of Minnesota. Most recently, he was a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Professor JoAnne Stubbe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His laboratory is interested in mechanistic studies of metallo-protein catalyzed processes (with emphasis on radical involving reactions) and their roles in signal transductions. His initial projects are directed at studying proteins involved in isoprenoid biosynthesis and chromatin structural modulations.
Professor Wang received his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Pittsburgh after which he became a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Professor Gregory Voth at the University of Utah. His group is interested in multi-scale Monte Carlo or molecular dynamics study of large systems at finite temperature using high accuracy force fields. He is also interested in systematic development of such force fields using a revised version of the force-matching procedure. Problems of particular interest include ligand docking, mechanical properties of metal alloys and properties of methane clathrates at different temperature and pressure.