Phone
Office Location
Smith 511
Michele Pavanello is a professor of Chemistry and Physics in the Newark campus of Rutgers University. Michele graduated in 2010 with a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Arizona working with Prof Ludwik Adamowicz on describing few-particle Coulomb systems such as the H3+ molecular ion as accurately as possible. A Marie Curie fellowship took him to the Netherlands to work on density embedding and its formulations for describing charge-transfer reactions with Prof Johannes Neugebauer (now at Munster, Germany). Since 2012, Michele has been leading the Pavanello Research Group (PRG) focusing on electronic structure method development, targeting material science as a major focus, funded by NSF, DOE and ACS-PRF grants. Michele received the ACS-COMP OpenEye junior faculty award in 2016, and in the same year he received the NSF CAREER award. In 2018 and 2020 Michele was awarded the Rutgers Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research for recently promoted as well as for tenured faculty. In 2022, the Physical Chemistry division of ACS awarded him the ACS-PHYS Early Career Award for Theoretical Chemistry.
Research Initiatives
The Pavanello group specializes in the development of electronic structure methods based on Density-Functional Theory (DFT). We use our methods to model an array of phenomena relevant to chemistry and materials research, with emphasis on molecular condensed phases, dynamics of charge and electronic excitation energy across material's interfaces and biosystems. As part of NSF and DOE funded programs, we develop an array of open-source materials modeling software.
For additional details, visit our group website and the website of the NSF software center "Quantum Multiscale".
Awards
- ACS Physical Chemistry Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry (2022)
- Rutgers Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research (2020)
- Rutgers Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence (2018)
- ACS OpenEye Junior Faculty Award (2016)
- NSF CAREER (2016)
- ACS PRF (2014)
Education
- MS University of Pisa (2004)
- PhD University of Arizona (2010)
Expertise
Computational and Theoretical Physics, Theoretical Chemistry