Congratulations to Professor Baron Peters, winner of the 2019 Impact Award from the Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers!
The CoMSEF Impact Award recognizes outstanding research in computational molecular science and engineering, encompassing both methods and applications. He will receive the award at the AIChE annual meeting this month in Orlando.
Peters joined the Illinois faculty in January 2019 and is a William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor. Dr. Peters’ research includes developing fundamental new methods in rare events modeling to understand catalytic and chemical reaction pathways. He studies reactions between charged species in solution, which is an open and fertile area of research with key applications to energy and the food/water nexus.
He specifically aims to understand whether a single universal solvent reaction coordinate (e.g., a unifying theme) can be applied to reactions involving charge transfer with atoms in fixed positions, atom migration with fixed charges, and coupled charge transfer and atom migration. In a second area, he studies nucleation and growth using simulations that accurately capture multiple species including solutes, solvents, surfactants, and nucleants. This is a general platform that can be broadly applied to a wide array of value-added products in the chemical industry.
Peters graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia with a BS in Mathematics and Chemical Engineering. He earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and completed postdoctoral research at MIT and Ecole Normale Superieure.