Marquette graduate student named investment software fellow

July 27, 2020

Igor GaydayMILWAUKEE — Igor Gayday, a graduate student in the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences at Marquette University, has been selected for an investment fellowship from the 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.

Gayday’s graduate adviser, Dr. Dmitri Babikov, professor of chemistry, said the department is proud of Gayday’s achievements and the work he will be advancing with the prestigious fellowship.

“The goal is to develop and release a user-friendly software package that the molecular modeling community could benefit from,” Babikov said. “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.”

The institute provides funding for a set of prestigious fellowships that recognize advanced graduate students and postdocs pursuing the development of software infrastructure, middleware and frameworks that will benefit the broader field of computational molecular sciences, including biomolecular and macromolecular simulation, quantum chemistry, and materials science. Fellows receive specialized training in state-of-the-art software design principles and tools, and engage in outreach and educational efforts organized by the institute. Each fellow is assigned a mentor among the institute’s software scientists, who oversees their software development efforts and training.

The Molecular Sciences Software Institute is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and serves as a nexus for science, education, and cooperation serving the worldwide community of computational molecular scientists – a broad field including of biomolecular simulation, quantum chemistry, and materials science.