Effects of Electric Fields on Structure and Reactivity

Sason Shaik (1948) received his PhD degree with N.D. Epiotis at the University of Washington (Seattle). He did postdoctoral research with R. Hoffmann (Cornell), and then returned to Israel, where he directed for 20 years the Lise Meitner- Minerva Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, and is currently a Saerree K. and Louis P. Fiedler Professor of Chemistry at the Hebrew University. His main interests are in bonding, chemical reactivity, metalloenzymes, and electric field effects in chemistry. Alongside a variety of computational tools, he uses valence bond theory as a conceptual frame, and has developed a number of new paradigms and concepts using this theory. His main recent awards are the Schroedinger Medal (WATOC 2007); the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Medal (the German Chemical Society, 2012); Membership in the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science (2015); and The Gold Medal of the Israel Chemical Society (2017). He also writes essays on history, the chemical bond as the heartland of chemistry, and some poetry.


Thijs Stuyver (1992) received his PhD degree under the supervision of Prof. Paul Geerlings, Prof. Frank De Proft and Dr. Stijn Fias at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2018. He visited Roald Hoffmann's group at Cornell University in 2016. As an FWO post-doctoral fellow, he is currently working with Prof. Sason Shaik at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests involve electric field mediated chemistry, single-molecule electronics, diradical chemistry and valence bond theory.