News

Zhengyuan (Don) Shen receives Fellowship

Zhengyuan (Don) Shen receives the 2021-2022 Richard D. Amelar and Arthur S. Lodge Fellowship for Outstanding Collaborative Research in Materials. This award is given annually to a graduate student from the Departments of Chemistry or Chemical Engineering and Materials Science who has demonstrated excellence in their area of interest and a willingness to collaborate with other students and/or groups.

Zhengyuan (Don) Shen

Andrew Sun Receives Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

Yangzesheng (Andrew) Sun receives a Dissertation Fellowship (DDF). The DDF gives the University's most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. Andrew’s research project is on "Machine learning in conjunction with molecular simulations for nanoporous materials discovery”.

Yangzesheng (Andrew) Sun

Collaborative Research Featured on Journal Covers

University of Minnesota Twin Cities graduate students and postdoctoral associates, including members of the Siepmann Group, carried out collaborative research on fluid phase and adsorption equilibria that is highlighted on three ACS journal covers in early 2021.

Three journal covers featuring Siepmann Group research

Jingyi Chen Successfully Defends Doctoral Dissertation

Jingyi Chen has successfully defended her doctoral dissertation entitled “Molecular Simulation Studies of Aqueous Interfacial Fluids." Jingyi joined the chemistry graduate program in 2015 after receiving her undergraduate degree from Nanjing University. She will stay at UMN for a short while, then start a postdoctoral position at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. We wish Jingyi all the best in her future endeavors!

Jingyi Chen doctoral dissertation defense

Professor Siepmann Named Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has named Prof. Siepmann editor-in-chief of the Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data.

The Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data was first introduced in 1959 and focuses on data on the phase behavior and the physical, thermodynamic and transport properties of well-defined materials, including complex mixtures of known compositions. 

Related links:

Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data

Andrew Sun Awarded 2020 Excellence Fellowship

Graduate student Andrew Sun was awarded a Department of Chemistry 2020-2021 Excellence Fellowship. The fellowships are supported by donors, and Andrew was awarded the Robert and Jill DeMaster Fellowship. Congrats, Andrew!

Yangzesheng (Andrew) Sun

Tyler Josephson Accepts Faculty Position

Former postdoctoral researcher Tyler Josephson recently started as an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). At UMBC, he will be launching the ATOMS lab (AI & Theory-Oriented Molecular Science). The lab will use artificial intelligence and molecular simulation to engineer solutions for a cleaner environment.

Tyler’s research during his time with the group focused on using molecular modeling and machine learning to understand adsorption thermodynamics in complex systems. He co-authored numerous publications and was featured in a Meet CTC profile.

Tyler Josephson

TraPPE website is back!

The widely used TraPPE website has been moved to a new address, and new features have been added. Our sincere apologies for the prolonged absence, but a malicious attack led to the shutdown of the previous TraPPE server. The new TraPPE website now also includes the TraPPE-UA2 models and, for selected molecules, parameter files in Foyer XML format and molecular structures and energies.

Mona Minkara featured in Northeastern University student newspaper

Former Siepmann Group postdoc Mona Minkara is featured in The Huntington News, the independent student newspaper of Northeastern University, where she is an affiliate faculty member at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Read the full article here.

Mona Minkara in classroom

NMGC Research on Ethanol Purification Leads to Patent

A patent entitled "Zeolites for separation of ethanol and water" was granted to Ilja Siepmann, Peng Bai, and Michael Tsapatsis. A high-throughput computational screening study led to the discovery of zeolites for adsorption or membrane based separation processes.

Professor Siepmann receives 2018 ASME Touloukian Award

The 2018 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Yeram S. Touloukian Award was presented at the triennial Symposium on Thermophysical Properties to Ilja Siepmann for distinguished contributions to predictive modeling of complex fluids including their thermophysical and structural properties and their phase and sorption equilibria; and for pioneering developments of efficient Monte Carlo algorithms and accurate transferable force fields.

Evgenii Fetisov wins Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award

Evgenii Fetosov won the Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award for Graduate Students presented by the Americal Chemical Society (ACS) Computers in Chemistry Division at the ACS National Meeting in Washington, D.C. He was honored for his research on first principles Monte Carlo simulations of reactive phase and sorption equilibria.

Groundbreaking process for creating ultra-selective separation membranes published in Nature

A team of researchers, led by the University of Minnesota, has developed a groundbreaking one-step, crystal growth process for making ultra-thin zeolite nanosheets and demonstrated their use as ultra-selective membranes for chemical separations. Peng Bai, Evgenii Fetisov,  Raghu Thyagarajan, and Rob DeJaco performed electronic structure calculations and molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations to aid the structure determination and probe the transport and adsorption selectivities.

Take the Best, Leave the Rest

Integrated computational and experimental research discovers new ways to sort molecules for clean energy and other applications.

Take the Best, Leave the Rest

Researchers Identify Promising Materials for Next Generation Sour Gas Sweetening

Mansi Shah, a fourth-year graduate student in chemical engineering, and her advisors, Michael Tsapatsis and Ilja Siepmann, have identified promising zeolite structures that will be instrumental in the design of next-generation gas sweetening technologies.

A manuscript describing this research has appeared online in Angewandte Chemie International Edition and will also featured as a frontispiece in a future issue.

Mona Minkara, Ph.D., Received Ford Foundation Fellowship

Mona Minkara, Ph.D., a post-doctoral associate working with Professor J. Ilja Siepmann, has received a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Ford Foundation Fellowship. Congratulations, Mona!

Rebecca Lindsey Receives Award at ACS. Congrats, Becky!

Rebecca Lindsey has been awarded the Colloids and Surface Chemistry Division Poster Award at the 2016 ACS meeting for her work entitled, “Partitioning of Organics in Surfactant Bilayers.”

Rebecca K. Lindsey

Siepmann Group Heading to San Diego for ACS

J. Ilja Siepmann  |  Evgenii Festisov  |  David Harwood  |  Robert Hembree  |  Rebecca Lindsey  |  Mona Minkara  |  Kimberly Struk  |  Jeffrey Sung