Daniel Levine
Faculty
Dr. Daniel Levine is a research scientist at Schrodinger, Inc. He earned his PhD from UC Berkeley in synthetic inorganic chemistry with Prof. T. Don Tilley and the late Prof. Dick Andersen working on group 3 and lanthanide catalysis before moving on to post-doctoral work with Prof. Martin Head-Gordon in quantum methods development. For the past 9 years, his work has focused on the development of new QM methodologies, for increased interpretability, increased accuracy, and/or increased usability. More recently, he has focused on the use of machine learning methods to accelerate chemical discovery.
Brandon Allgood
Faculty
Brandon Allgood is a serial entrepreneur and researcher focused on applying machine learning (ML) and large scale computational methods to improve human health. Currently, Brandon runs a consulting and early stage investment company, Obsidian Scientific. LLC, where he uses his 19 years of experience in developing AI based platforms in healthcare to help large pharma, venture capital, private equity, and start-ups with AI strategy, platform architecture, early research, and technology management. Brandon previously helped build three companies, Valo Health, Numerate, and Pharmix, at the forefront of applying modern ML and computational methods to drug discovery and development in diverse subfields, including chemistry, biology, clinical trials and real-world health data. Brandon received a B.S. in Physics from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Cosmology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Brandon has authored scientific publications in astrophysics, solid-state physics, computational biology and chemistry, and business. He is also co-founder and former executive chair of the Alliance for AI in Healthcare (AAIH), former UCSC Foundation Trustee and current UCSC Baskin School of Engineering Dean's Council member.
Emma Bilski
Graduate Student Services Advisor and Program Manager
Emma Bilski is the Graduate Student Services Advisor and Program Manager for MSSE. She recently moved to the Bay Area from Richmond, Virginia after completing her M.Ed. in Educational Leadership with a concentration in Leadership Studies in May 2022. She is passionate about accessibility in higher education, especially through a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging lens, and is thrilled to join the MSSE team! To learn more about Emma, check out her website: www.emmabilski.com. Current and prospective students should feel free to reach out at any time with questions or concerns; please email bilskiec@berkeley.edu.
Current Students: Book Advising with me
Prospective Students: Meet with me
Sean Butcher
Executive Director of MSSE
Sean Butcher is the Executive Director for Berkeley College of Chemistry's Master in Molecular Engineering and Software Engineering. He has more than 20 years of experience in the online higher education industry, software development, Internet services, and commercial law. Previously, Sean was the Director of Data Science partnerships for USF's Data Institute and the Program Director for Technology and Engineering at UC Berkeley Extension. Prior to working in higher education, Sean worked in the California Bay Area in Software Product Management and as a commercial litigation lawyer at Lovell White Durrant (now Hogan Lovells) in London. Sean has a law degree from the University of Birmingham, England, and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Mike Cheng
Faculty & Leadership Boot Camp Lead
Mr. Mike Cheng is a retired senior executive of a Silicon Valley technology company with 30 years of general management, operations management, and marketing experience, and senior adjunct professor of management at the Ageno School of Business, Golden Gate University. He served as Golden Gate University’s MBA Program Director from 2015 to 2017 and led the redesign and launch of their current MBA and EMBA programs. His teaching interests are in business strategy formulation and execution, and corporate social responsibilities. Mr. Cheng has served as an advisory board member in UC Berkeley’s Rausser College of Natural Resources (RCNR) and is a frequent workshop leader in RCNR’s Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program. Mr. Cheng is a Management of Technology Companies graduate from the American Electronics Association/Stanford Executive Institute. He holds an MBA in General Management from Golden Gate University and received a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Luis Crivelli
Faculty
Dr. Luis Crivelli has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering. His doctoral work was on Large Deformation Finite Elements under Professor Carlos Felippa. His postdoctoral work was on Parallel Computing with Professor Charbel Farhat. He is among the first developers of FETI (finite element tearing and interconnect). In 1992 he joined Hibbitt, Karlsson, and Sorensen (HKS) , the developers of ABAQUS, the most advanced nonlinear finite element software. He has been responsible for a number of projects that afforded ABAQUS a leadership position in High Performance Computing.
James Demmel
Faculty
Professor Demmel received his B.S. in Mathematics from Caltech in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 1983. After spending six years on the faculty of the Courant Institute, New York University; he joined the Computer Science Division and Mathematics Departments at Berkeley in 1990, where he holds joint appointments. Professor Demmel is an ACM Fellow, a SIAM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science. He has also won the IEEE Computer Society Sydney Fernbach Award for "computational science leadership in creating adaptive, innovative, high performance linear algebra software."
Tony Drummond
Faculty & Capstone Project Lead
Dr. Tony Drummond is a Computer Scientist with over 30 years of demonstrated experience in High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Computational Sciences research and accredited with the highest academic European degree;Habilitation to Direct Research. He also leads the Master’s Capstone project and collaborations along with teaching MSSE courses. As a Data Scientist, he was worked with International Economics Trade Models for Ecological Footprint calculations studyig data analysis of global land use. He is a former staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy for over 15 years.
Martin Head-Gordon
Faculty
Prof Head-Gordon is The Kenneth S. Pitzer Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, an American Chemical Society Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences. Professor Head-Gordon’s studies in theoretical chemistry attack the frontiers of electronic structure calculations by the development of novel theories and algorithms. His research centers on the development and application of electronic structure theories, to permit the treatment of problems that are currently beyond the reach of standard methods. Within electronic structure theory, Martin Head-Gordon is known for the development of linear scaling methods for performing density functional theory calculations, for new methods for calculating electronic excited states, and for advances in electron correlation methods, including widely used density functionals. Additionally, he works on applications that include modeling catalysis and a diverse range of intermolecular interactions. Prof. Head-Gordon’s group has actively contributed to the Q-Chem program package and has collaborated with Q-Chem Inc. on the development of linear-scaling density functional methods, and local correlation methods.
Teresa Head-Gordon
Faculty Director of MSSE
Prof. Teresa Head-Gordon is Chancellor’s professor of chemistry, bioengineering, and chemical and biomolecular engineering. She is a member of the Pitzer Center for Theoretical Chemistry, is on the Board of Directors of the Molecular Sciences Software Institute, is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, and is also the co-director of CalSov. She is an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering for her contributions to the computational methodologies for macromolecular assemblies. Prof Head-Gordon’s research group develops software packages for molecular simulations and she has recently received funding from the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute for her COVID-19 project entitled ” Small Molecule Drug Discovery for COVID-19 Using Physics-Inspired Machine Learning”.
Jessica Nash
Faculty
Jessica Nash is a Software Scientist and the Education Lead at The Molecular Sciences Software Institute. She completed her PhD at North Carolina State University in Materials Science and Engineering, where she studied DNA nano-materials using molecular dynamics simulations. Since joining MolSSI in 2017, her work has focused on the development and improvement of software in the computational molecular sciences. She currently works as the lead developer for the web dashboard for MolSSI’s project SEAMM (Simulation Environment for Atomistic and Molecular Simulation). As Education Lead for the Institute, she develops educational materials for researchers which enhance their capabilities to write code and use computational molecular science software.
Benjamin Pritchard
Faculty
Dr. Ben Pritchard is a software scientist at MolSSI. His PhD thesis research was largely focused on computation of paramagnetic nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) using density functional theory. He has a passion for programming, with a particular focus on C++, Python, and how a marriage of the two can be used in forming coherent frameworks in computational chemistry.