Hrant P. Hratchian is Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Vice Provost and Dean for Graduate Education at the University of California Merced. A Michigan native, he obtained his B.S. degree in chemistry from Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, MI) and completed doctoral studies under the tutelage of Professor H. Bernhard Schlegel at Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) where he was an NSF-IGERT Graduate Fellow. From 2005-2008 he was the Ernest R. Davidson Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN), where he worked with Professor Krishnan Raghavachari. From 2008-2013, he was a Research Scientist at Gaussian, Inc. (Wallingford, CT). In 2013, he joined the faculty at the University of California Merced in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry.

Professor Hratchian has served in a number of additional leadership roles at UC Merced, including as Chemistry & Biochemistry Department Chair, Interim co-Director of Cyberinfrastructure and Research Computing, and as Chair of the Academic Senate's Graduate Council. Professor Hratchian has been honored with a Hellman Foundation Fellowship and an NSF CAREER award. He and his research group have received extramural funding support from the Petroleum Research Fund, Hellman Family Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy. Professor Hratchian’s research interests include the development and application of efficient computational chemistry methods to explore the unique properties of transition metals and catalyzed chemical transformations.

Abdulrahman Zamani is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Merced. He obtained his B.S. in biochemistry at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. He is now researching spin projection models for investigating transition metal systems featuring coupled or localized spin centers.

Cristian Sarabia is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Merced, jointly studying in the Hratchian and Baxter Groups. He obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry at California State University, Fresno. His current research interests lie in computational mechanistic investigation of novel organic functional group transformations. In his free time, he enjoys doing community outreach, using his telescope, learning about Astronomy, rocks, and spending time with his fiancée Alex. Fun Fact: He has most of the Periodic Table memorized.

Andrew Bovill is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Merced. He obtained both his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2016 and 2019 respectively. Before starting at UC Merced, Andrew previously worked as an analytical chemist in industry. His current research evolves investigating and developing new excitation methods.

Abigail O. Gyamfi is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Merced. She obtained her B.Sc. (Hons) in Chemistry and M.Sc. Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety degrees from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Currently, her research interest lies in computational investigation of three-center, two-electron chemical bond in halogen bonding interactions.

Brianna is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Merced, jointly studying in the Hratchian and Pribram-Jones Groups. She obtained her A.S.T. in Chemistry at Bakersfield College and her B.S. in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley she conducted research with Dr. Eric Neuscamman and at LBNL with Dr. Sinéad Griffin. Her current research interests lie in investigating excitation methods, including the application of single-determinant methods to model complex excited states possessing unpaired electrons.