From the 2017 Lucian Professor and Chair of Chemistry, Dr. Tricia Shepherd:

This week Friday, the Lucian Symposium will be held in Carter Auditorium beginning at 8:50 am.  You can find details on the Lucian Symposium website:  https://sites.stedwards.edu/lucian/.  The Lucian Symposium is an annual event, open to the public.

Lunch follows the keynote speakers.  After lunch, student research posters will be available for viewing in the halls of the John Brooks Williams North Building from 1:30 – 3:30 pm.

There will be four keynote speakers:

• Thomas E. Cheatham, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry & Director of the Center for High Performance Computing at the University of Utah
• Michelle M. Francl, Professor and Chair of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College
• Ward Thompson, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kansas
• Garritt Tucker, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado School of Mines (http://inside.mines.edu/Garritt-Tucker)

While there will be a common thread among speakers in terms of the using various computational methods in their research, the application/connections with undergraduates in each Natural Science discipline was my goal for the symposium. In particular, the presentations will be broadly applicable as follows: Cheatham: Biology/Computer Science, Francl: Mathematics, Thompson:Chemistry, Tucker:Physics/Engineering. I have advised all the speakers to include background/context appropriate for a broad audience of majors that span the Natural Sciences. Below is the schedule with tentative titles:

Friday, Sept 29th
8:50 am welcome
9:00-9:45   Garritt Tucker: Exploring the Nanoscale Mechanisms of Functional Materials with Computational Materials Science
9:45-10:30   Ward Thompson: The Big Deal about Being Small: Dynamics and Spectroscopy in Nanopores
10:30-10:45   break
10:45-11:30   Michelle Francl: Tools for predicting and understanding molecular structure from paper and pencil to Beowulf clusters
11:30-12:15   Tom Cheatham: Optimizing the use of computers to understand the complexity of biomolecular systems
12:15-1:30   lunch
1:30-3:30   poster session

I appreciate your support of this annual event for our school!
Thanks,
Tricia

Tricia Shepherd, PhD
Chemistry Professor & Dept. Chair
St. Edward’s University