Peter Rossky

Biography

Peter Rossky received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry summa cum laude from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics in 1978 at Harvard working with Martin Karplus. After postgraduate research as an NSF National Needs Postdoctoral Fellow at SUNY, Stony Brook, working on ionic solutions with Harold Friedman, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Chemistry in 1979. He currently holds the Marvin K. Collie-Welch Regents Chair in Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, as well as an appointment as Professor of Chemical Engineering. He is the Director of the Center for Computational Molecular Sciences in the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. His research at Texas has pursued the elucidation of structural and dynamic chemical processes in the condensed phase, with a focus on liquids and solutions, and water in particular. The work emphasizes realistic atomistic descriptions of complex molecular systems studied using classical and quantum statistical physics, as well as quantum chemistry. His group has developed a number of new algorithms which underlie the ability to study quantum systems effectively in a condensed phase using computer simulation.

Research Interest

Current research interests include solvation of biomolecular systems, and quantum dynamical effects on condensed phase processes, including electron transfer and processes in organic optoelectronic materials.