UofM Posts Strong Performance at SETCA
Chemistry students won at poster sessions and presented an oral talk during annual meeting
The 52nd meeting of the Southeastern Chemistry Association (SETCA) was held at Virginia Tech in mid-May. SETCA is a regional computational/theoretical chemistry conference that occurs every May and rotates among colleges and universities in the Southeast US. The SETCA itinerary historically focuses on welcoming new researchers to the regional community at all levels of training and education. For example, the NSF-funded Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI) hosted a pre-conference workshop for graduate students who are new to software development and computer programming. The oral sessions prioritize giving exposure to junior faculty members in the region, and Profs. Qianyi Cheng and Daniel Nascimento in the UM Department of Chemistry both gave invited talks.
Four faculty members, two postdoctoral workers, and six graduate students from the UM Department of Chemistry attended the 2024 SETCA meeting, possibly the largest number of representatives from UM in the storied history of the conference. UM attendees also had their strongest ever performance in the SETCA poster sessions. Dr. Dominique Wappett (postdoc in the DeYonker group) and TJ Suhagia (fifth year graduate student in the DeYonker group) each won a poster session award. Brinton Eldridge (second year graduate student in the Wang group) was one of only three grad students selected to give a contributed oral talk during the meeting and then also won a poster session award!
UM will be hosting the 53rd SETCA meeting in May 2025, with Profs. Cheng, Nascimento, and DeYonker co-organizing. We expect 100-150 computational/theoretical chemists from the region to visit our campus next year.
For more information on the upcoming 2025 SETCH meeting, contact DeYonker at ndyonker@memphis.edu.