This year's Henry Frank Memorial Lecture speaker is Prof. T. Daniel Crawford, Virginia Tech.

Talk Title: Chiroptical Spectroscopy in the Frequency and Time Domains

Abstract: The successes of reduced-scaling quantum-chemical methods are well known for molecular structures, reaction energies, thermodynamic constants, etc. — properties that depend primarily on the quality of the ground-state wave function. However, much more challenging are higher- order properties such as polarizabilities, optical rotations, and others that also require accurate representation of the response of the wave function with respect to external electromagnetic fields. This lecture will provide an overview of our recent efforts to improve the description of such perturbed wave functions, from the development of field-aware densities to streamline local pair-natural orbital methods for frequency-dependent response theory to the use of local correlation techniques and other methods to reduce the cost of time-dependent coupled-cluster simulations of absorption and circular dichroism spectra. 

Speaker Bio: Prof. T. Daniel Crawford is the University Distinguished Professor and Ethyl Chair of Chemistry at Virginia Tech, as well as the Director of the Molecular Sciences Software Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia.  He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry and mathematics in 1992 from Duke University and his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Georgia's Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry under the direction of Prof. Henry F.  Schaefer.  He held joint postdoctoral positions at U. Georgia and U. Texas before joining the Virginia Tech faculty in 2000.  Prof. Crawford's research focuses on the development of accurate quantum mechanical models for simulating the optical and vibrational spectra of chiral molecules.  He has given more than 230 lectures in 27 countries.  Prof. Crawford is the winner of 2010 Dirac Medal of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists, winner of the 2023 Cottrell STAR Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and an elected member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists.  He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and the Deputy Editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

See more of Dr. Crawford's research on his lab website: https://crawford.chem.vt.edu/