Alexander Doran, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Area

As a graduate student in the Hirata lab, I developing new and improving existing Monte Carlo many-body methods. Developing many-body methods can be a particularly challenging task as the complexity of the equations rapidly increases as perturbation order is increased. To correctly establish working equations for new methods, I developed an automated code generate which relied on the underlying Feynman-Goldstone expansions of the methods. The automated code generator produces equations for new Monte Carlo methods and to the best of my knowledge, was used to produce the first implementation of fourth and fifth-order many-body greens functions theory. In addition to developing new methodologies, I have developed a framework such that all existing and future Monte Carlo Many-Body methods developed in the Hirata lab can easily be implemented and executed on thousands of CPU or GPUs. The first step in this process was to create a GPU-accelerated version MC-MP2 using the CUDA toolkit, which achieved an order of magnitude speedup compared to the CPU implementation on similar hardware. My current project is the development of MC-GF3, utilizing the framework mentioned earlier. Currently, I am actively running tests on the Blue Waters supercomputer and writing manuscript detailing the new method.

Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Area

I held the position of teaching assistant (TA) for two semesters at UIUC. I was a TA for physical chemistry I (quantum mechanics) and physical chemistry II (thermodynamics). As a TA, I was responsible for grading homework and exams, holding office hours, attending lectures, and moderating exams as a TA for physical chemistry II was responsible for creating grading rubrics for homework assignments and exams as a TA for physical chemistry II.

Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Area

I served as the co-chair of the student-select-seminar committee for two years. As the co-chair of the committee, I was in charge of arranging and directing meetings of the committee and the organization of the Physical Chemistry Student Select Seminar at UIUC, a seminar given by a speaker chosen by the physical chemistry graduate students. Additionally, I was in charge of inviting and hosting the speaker selected by the Hirata lab.

Bloomington, Indiana

As an undergraduate researcher in the Iyengar lab, I studied hydroxy-proxy-isoprenoids, which are atmospheric molecules proposed to play an essential role in the fast photochemistry above pristine tropical forests, via ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Through the simulations, we discovered that the inclusion of anharmonicity is crucial for predicting the vibrational density of states of these molecules correctly. I presented this work at several poster sessions and in my undergraduate research thesis.

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Physical Chemistry

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Chemistry