Geoffrey R. Hutchison
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
B.A. Chemistry, Williams College, 1999 (Lee Y. Park, advisor)
Ph.D. Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2004
(Tobin J. Marks, Mark A. Ratner co-advisors)
Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry, Cornell University, 2004-2007
(Héctor D. Abruña, advisor)
Founder and Lead Developer, Avogadro
Founder and Lead Developer, Open Babel
Selected Awards and Honors
• 2018 Tina & David Bellet Teaching Excellence Award
• 2017 Scialog Fellow in Advanced Energy Storage
• 2012 Cottrell Scholar Award
• 2012 Class of 1960 Scholar Lecturer in Chemistry, Williams College
• 2006 Blue Obelisk Award in Cheminformatics
• 2002 IBM Graduate Student Computational Chemistry Award (American Chemical Society)
• 2001-2003 Northwestern University Materials Research Center Fellowship
Current Graduate Students
Chris Petroff
Characterization Wizard (2015-)
Chris investigates piezoelectric materials using device-level electromechanical testing. Chris was born and raised in Connecticut. Before coming to Pitt, he earned a B.S. in chemistry from Boston College where he spent two years researching metal-organic frameworks and nanoparticles. An avid runner, Chris ran cross country and track in high school before picking up marathoning in college; he has completed six marathons including Pittsburgh, Chicago, Berlin, and Boston
Dakota Folmsbee
Neural Net Tamer (2017-)
Dakota designs machine learning methods to quickly approximate quantum chemical methods. Dakota comes from Vermont, earning a B.S. from Clarkson University.
Anneliese Schmidt
Polymer Synthesis Pro (2017-)
Anneliese synthesizes polymers with the Meyer Group, designing conjugated, polarizable sequenced oligomers for high capacitance energy storage. Anneliese received her B.S. in chemistry from the University of South Carolina Upstate, with industrial research at Milliken and Company, where she synthesized small molecules as additives to improve various polymers’ properties, e.g. toughness or permeability. The goal of my current project is to understand how the sequence of polymer side chains affects the dielectric constant of the polymer.
Danielle Hiener
Genetic Algorithm Optimizer (2019-)
Danielle develops genetic algorithms to rapidly find oligomers with interesting electronic structure properties. Danielle grew up in the Pittsburgh region and attended Grove City College, where she earned her B.S. in Chemistry. As an undergrad, she participated in computational research exploring temporary anion states. She enjoys sewing and ballroom/swing dancing.
Ryan Wheat
Metal Organic Framework Finder (2019-)
Ryan combines his interests in computers and chemistry to find stable metal-organic frameworks for new properties. Ryan received his B.S. in Chemistry and a Minor in Music from the Florida Institute of Technology. Spending the majority of his life in a small city in Florida, he finds Pittsburgh to be far colder and noisier.
Caroline Chun
Peptide AFM Virtuoso (2020-)
Caroline is working to find oligopeptides and other self-assembled monolayers with piezo activity using piezo-force microscopy (PFM/AFM) and calculations. Caroline grew up in Philadelphia, South Korea, and Virginia and received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia. Some of her interests include traveling, strolling around, and reading magical realism literature.
Omri Abarbanel
Machine Learning Maestro (2020-)
Omri combines his interest in chemistry and coding to find ML methods for rapid screening of complex molecular properties. Omri was born in Israel and moved to the United States in 2011. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from CUNY Hunter College in 2017, and did a research internship on second harmonic generation imaging of peptide self-assembly structures with Dr. Rein Ulijn at CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. After that, he moved to Pittsburgh in 2018 to start his graduate program in Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.
Brianna Greenstein
Organic Solar Cell Explorer (2020-)
Brianna utilizes computational methods and data science to optimize organic solar cells. Brianna grew up in New York and received her B.S. in Chemistry from SUNY Binghamton University, where she did research on metal alloy nanoparticles as catalysts for CO2 reduction. Here at Pitt, she was lured away from nanoparticle research during the COVID-19 lockdown. During her free time she enjoys painting and drawing.