image: Giulia Galli, Joseph O. Hirschfelder Awardee by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Theoretical Chemistry Institute
Credit: (Image courtesy of the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering/Jean Lachat.)
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Theoretical Chemistry Institute awards the yearly prize for exceptional work in the field of theoretical chemistry. Four Nobel Prize recipients are among the past Hirschfelder Prize honorees.
“We are delighted to add professor Galli to this distinguished group of award winners,” said Professor Xuhui Huang, director of the Theoretical Chemistry Institute.
Giulia Galli is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, where she is a group leader and the director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials. She is also the Liew Family professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago.
“Giulia has made significant contributions to theoretical chemistry by developing advanced theoretical and computational methods for materials and molecules from first principles,” Huang said. “Her methods have been widely applied to predict and design the structural, electronic and optical properties of materials.”
The honor was particularly special as Galli considers Hirschfelder’s textbook, The Molecular Theory of Gases and Liquids, as one of the books that “really made a difference” during her Ph.D. work at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy.
“I still remember the dark green hard cover of the copy I was checking out at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics library in Trieste, when I was a student,” she said. “I was completely taken by surprise by the Hirschfelder award and I did not know I had been considered for it. I am honored to have been selected and I share this honor with the many students and postdocs who made it possible for me to be where I am today.”
“Giulia has made significant contributions to theoretical chemistry by developing advanced theoretical and computational methods for materials and molecules from first principles.” — Xuhui Huang, director, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Theoretical Chemistry Institute
She also credited her many experimental collaborators, in particular Kyoung-Shin Choi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and David Awschalom, who holds a joint appointment between Argonne and the University of Chicago. “Experimental collaborations have been absolutely critical to the success of my activity,” Galli said.
The Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize in Theoretical Chemistry, established in 1991, commemorates the life’s work professor Hirschfelder as a pioneering member of the theoretical chemistry field. Hirschfelder had an esteemed career in education, research and public service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for over 40 years.
Adapted from story posted by Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago.
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