A graduate student at Marquette University in Milwaukee is receiving developmental and financial support from a world leader in computational molecular science to advance his software.
Igor Gayday, a graduate student in Marquette’s Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, is one of a select group of graduate students and postdoctoral associates selected out of more than 50 applicants for an investment fellowship from the Virginia-based Molecular Sciences Software Institute.
The Molecular Sciences Software Institute Investment Fellowship recognizes software development efforts that will benefit the field of computational molecular sciences and have a broad impact on the community.
Through the fellowship, Gayday will receive 18 months of support for his project that aims to develop a program for calculation of “coupled rotational-vibrational energy levels and their respective lifetimes of three-atomic (and, potentially, tetra-atomic) systems in hyper-spherical coordinates.”
“The goal is to develop and release a user-friendly software package that the molecular modeling community could benefit from,” said Dmitri Babikov, a Marquette professor of chemistry and Gayday’s advisor, in a statement. “He is a credit to our program and the graduate school with his hard work and initiative and is also able to serve as a model for his peers as they seek funding opportunities for their work.”
Each fellow is assigned a mentor among the institute’s software scientists, who oversees their software development efforts and training. Gayday also has the opportunity to spend a minimum of one week at the institute’s headquarters at Virginia Tech to interact with the software scientists, members of the MolSSI board and other visitors.
The MolSSI, which is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, offers two types of software fellowships—seed and investment. Gayday is receiving the investment fellowship. The seed fellowship lasts for six months and is designed to implement recommended best practices. The 18-month fellowships support software development efforts that will have a broader impact on the community.
Here’s the full list of 2020 fellows:
- Samragni Banerjee, The Ohio State University (a 2020 Seed Fellow)
- Madison Berger, University of North Texas
- Victor H. Chavez, Purdue University (a 2020 Seed Fellow)
- Igor Gayday, Marquette University
- James R. Gayvert, Boston University (a 2020 Seed Fellow)
- Xuecheng Shao, Rutgers University – Newark
- Bryce Westheimer, Iowa State University
- Yuan Yao, Cornell University (a 2020 Seed Fellow)
