Campus Hosts Computational Chemistry Conference

UC Merced was the site of the 22nd Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate computational chemistRY (MERCURY) Conference held in mid-July.

"MERCURY is delighted to have the University of California, Merced, host this year's annual meeting on the campus," said Furman University chemistry Professor George Shields, consortium founder and director of its executive committee. "The MERCURY Consortium was founded in 2001 with the goal of establishing research collaborations among computational chemistry faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions."

Faculty in the consortium initiate research projects for undergraduates to provide them with invaluable skills and knowledge.

"We have found that when we have diverse groups of students, we do better science and publish lots of papers," Shields said. "The more diverse the groups are, the more excellent your work tends to be."

Consortium members, now totaling 44, collaborate on grant proposals and share National Science Foundation-funded computational facilities.

"We write grants together to apply for computing resources, that our individual campuses wouldn't be able to support but can be supported as a group," said theoretical and computational chemistry Professor Ashley Ringer McDonald from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. "We also host the MERCURY Conference every summer - a venue for undergraduate students to present their work and to learn from experts in the field."