Valerie Welborn

Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Department of Chemistry , Virginia Tech

Title: DNA-scaffolded synthetic enzymes for tunable high performance catalysis

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Biography

After completing a broad undergraduate education at ESPCI ParisTech in France, Dr. Vaissier Welborn specialized in developing computational techniques to model complex macromolecular systems.

She received her PhD in Physics from the Doctoral Training Center in Theory and Simulation of Materials at Imperial College London in 2014. Her graduate work revolved around the quantification of the kinetics of intermolecular charge transport in dye sensitized solar cells, performed under the supervision of Prof. Jenny Nelson and Prof. Piers Barnes.

Dr. Vaissier Welborn then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT in Troy van Voorhis’ research group where she focused on incorporating dynamical, ensemble-based, factors into electronic structure methods for a more accurate representation of solvent effects and other environmental factors. This was followed by a second postdoc at UC Berkeley in Teresa Head-Gordon’s group where she gained expertise inclassical molecular dynamics simulation of proteins and supramolecular catalysts with polarizable force fields.

Dr. Vaissier Welborn has since started her independent research program at Virginia Tech where she has been an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry since 2019.

Abstract

Proteins and supramolecular catalysts with polarizable force fields.