J. Emiliano Deustua, a fourth-year MSU doctorate chemistry student working with University Distinguished Professor Piotr Piecuch, has been awarded a prestigious Phase-I MolSSI Software Fellowship from the Molecular Sciences Software Institute, or MolSSI, which will support his doctoral work from July 1 to December 31, 2018.
Part of MolSSI’s mission is accomplished by awarding competitive fellowships to graduate students and postdoctoral associates in the United States who are pursuing software development projects. The most recent competition for these awards was exceptionally strong—with only 10 out of nearly 50 proposals selected—placing Deustua in a very elite group.
“I am thrilled that Emiliano has been awarded the MolSSI Software Fellowship and congratulate him on this outstanding recognition,” Piecuch said. “Hisresearch performance in our group has been phenomenal, so I am very pleased that he will be able to continue his already successful graduate work with the generous MolSSI’s support.”
Deustua’s doctoral work focuses on the development of efficient coupled-cluster methods and computer codes for high accuracy quantum chemistry applications combining deterministic and stochastic approaches to solving the electronic Schrödinger equation.
"It is a great honor to receive such a prestigious fellowship,” Deustua said. “One of the greatest joys in life comes from being recognized for one's work and contributions. The MolSSI Phase-I Fellowship will allow me to fully concentrate on the development of quantum chemistry methods and software, which are the areas of my Ph.D. work that I enjoy the most.”
The MoISSI, located at Virginia Tech and sponsored by the National Science Foundation, promotes advances in software infrastructure, education, standards and best practices that are needed to enable the computational molecular science community to tackle scientific grand challenges ranging from the simulation of intrinsically disordered proteins to the design of new catalysts.