Organising team

Current Chair

Cate joined the organizing team in 2021, becoming Chair in 2024. She holds a Christine Miller Research Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh and her research involves using a computational toolkit to understand electron driven phenomena. Prior to her independent position, Cate has worked in spectroscopy, computational and theoretical chemistry groups, in the UK, Russia e os EUA.

Founder

Julianna has been a member of the organizing team since the first Virtual Winter School on Computational Chemistry in 2015. She is an associate professor and leads the Computational Bioinorganic Chemistry Group at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary. She specializes in the modelling of transition metal complexes and metalloenzymes with a focus on systems relevant to human health. She has three daughters and she finds it very important to pass on her love of chemistry to younger generations.

Milica joined the organizing team in 2019. She is currently working as a group leader at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT), Rostock, Germany. Her main research interest is computational studies of transition metal catalysis.

Henrique attends the VWSCC since 2017 and joined the organizing committee in 2021. He is a post-doc researcher at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul working with ab initio calculations for molecular magnetism and organic photochemistry.

Robert is a professor of chemistry in the School of Engineering at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. A former principal organizer of the Electronic Computational Chemistry Conference, he joined the VWSCC organizing team in 2022. His research is currently focused on the development and application of new methods in stochastic sampling, machine learning, and quantum chemistry to problems of environmental interest.

Sandra joined the organizing team in 2023. She is a junior research leader (María Zambrano fellow) at USAL. Her main line of research focuses on simulating light-induced processes in complex molecular systems using quantum and mixed non-adiabatic dynamics, for applications in optoelectronics, anticancer therapies, and bioimaging.

Lea joined the organizing team in 2023. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute Chimie-Physique at University Paris-Saclay/CNRS, and focuses on the development and applications of nonadiabatic molecular dynamics approaches in research.

Ben joined the organizing team in 2024. He is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Edinburgh. His research is concerned with investigating polymers for lubricants and dispersives applications using molecular dynamics simulations.

My-Phuong joined the organization in 2024. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in chemical engineering at HCMUT in Vietnam, followed by a PhD from the University of Utah in the USA. Since 2011, she has been a lecturer at HCMUT where she conducts research on boron/silicon clusters doping metals. Her work focuses on exploring these novel materials for potential applications in hydrogen storage and carbon dioxide capture.

Ephrath joined the organizing team in 2024. She is a Lecturer in Computational Organic Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on computational studies of reactivity in organic and inorganic reactions, quantum tunneling, reaction mechanisms, and noncovalent interactions.

Founder & Former Chair

Goedele works as CNRS researcher at the Unité de glycobiologie structurale et fonctionnelle (UGSF, Univ. Lille, France). She founded the Winter School initiative in 2015 with the help of Julianna Oláh (Budapest University, Hungary), Andreas Savin (CNRS, UPMC Sorbonne Universités, France), and others. After seven editions of the Winter School, her focus returned to her research activities in the field of computational (redox)biochemistry.

Chair until 2024

Rebecca has been a member of the organizing team since 2016 and was the chair until the 2024 event. She is a Lecturer at University College London and her research involves the development of ultrafast optical and X-ray spectroscopies for studying molecular systems in combination with the application of different computational approaches.

Rika has been with the organising team since 2018. She is a computational chemist at Australia's NCI Supercomputer Facility. Her background is in ab initio method development and implementation, especially coupled cluster theory. Her current interests are in Machine Learning and remote collaboration initiatives.

Dominique joined the organizing team in 2022. She has recently finished her Ph.D. at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in chemistry education. Her main interests are in experimental and theoretical chemical and enzyme kinetics, with specialization in NMR and UV spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.

Jurgen is a tech enthusiast with a long standing experience in Joomla and webdesign. As an avid open source advocate, he believes that knowledge should be made accessible wherever possible. For this reason, he stepped into the Winter School project from the very beginning.

Oleg joined the Organising committee in 2017 volunteering and organizing in practical and technical aspects. Research interests concentrate but not limit to theoretical treatment of reaction mechanisms by state-of-the art (multireference and novel) quantum chemical methods, molecular (metal-free and metal-organic) catalysts, platinum and platinum-based nanocatalysts for stereo-and regioselective hydrogenation, development of chemical and kinetic models for material design and chemical vapor deposition.