Valerie Welborn, Ph.D., has joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor of theoretical chemistry.

Her research focuses on the multiscale simulation of complex interfaces, specifically interconversion kinetics of ion channels, water dynamics in mammalian bone, and interfaces in nanoelectronics.

Valerie earned her Ph.D. in Physics in 2014 at Imperial College London’s Centre for Doctoral Training on Theory and Simulation of Materials. Under the advising of Jenny Nelson and Piers Barnes, her thesis focused on the modeling of intermolecular charge transfer in dye sensitized solar cells. She then went onto two postdoctoral fellowships, the first from 2015–2017 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Troy Van Voorhis where she gained expertise in electronic structure methods for condensed phase systems, and the second from 2017–2019 at the University of California, Berkeley under Teresa Head-Gordon focusing on the characterization of enzymatic function via molecular dynamics.

Welcome to the department, Valerie!