In June, our group was pleased to welcome Lyuben Borislavov from the University of Sophia in Sophia, Bulgaria, where he was recommended by Professors Alia Tadjer and Todor Dudev, and Erica Mitchell from Taylor University in Upland Indiana, where she was recommended by Professor T. Brandon Magers. Erica worked on the multi-configuration pair-density functional theory of Diels-Alder reactions and the speedup of MC-PDFT analytic gradients, co-supervised by Professor Laura Gagliardi and also aided by Thais Scott, Jie Bao, and Matt Hermes. Lyuben worked on machine learning of molecular dynamics trajectories for the photodissociation of thioanisole, aided by Kelsey Parker and Yinan Shu. Both students presented their work at the 2019 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Symposium (SURF Symposium) of CTC on August 6: The speakers were
Lyuben Borislavov from Sofia University (Bulgaria), Don Truhlar group
Janey Lin from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, Laura Gagliardi group
Maria Mikhailenko from ITMO University (Russia), Jason Goodpaster group
Erica Mitchell from Taylor University, Indiana, groups of Gagliardi and Truhlar
Claire Shugart from Carlton College, Minnesota, Gagliardi group
Samuel Powell from Ohio Northern University, Gagliardi group
Victoria Vernadskaia from ITMO University (Russia), Ilja Siepmann group
Peiyao Wu from Emory University, Georgia, Siepmann group
After the symposium the picture at the right was taken of all the summer researchers in the CTC SURF program, along with the participating mentors and advisers.