Professor Truhlar honored for outstanding contributions to graduate and professional education

Regents Professor Donald G. Truhlar has received a 2020 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education. This award was established in 1999 to recognize contributions to postbaccalaureate, graduate, and professional education. Recipients are chosen for excellence in instruction; involvement in students' research, scholarship, and professional development; development of instructional programs; and advising and mentoring of students.

Truhlar is renowned as one the top theoretical chemists in the world and is one of the Department of Chemistry's most distinguished professors. He has received numerous prestigious accolades for his research, contributions to the profession, and unparalleled teaching, advising, and mentoring.

Excellence in Graduate Instruction

Professor Truhlar is one of the premier teachers in the Department of Chemistry graduate program. He continuously refreshes and updates his course materials. In his classes, he actively involves student in understanding the material, asking them to participate in the lecture rather than just taking notes and doing homework. He is an internationally honored expert in the subjects he teaches and brings his experiences to the ways he explains things.

He has created a number of instructional programs and courses. Over the years, Professor Truhlar developed several graduate-level courses in the Department of Chemistry, including his current “Dynamics” course, which he designed to give entering graduate students in physical chemistry the background that they need for quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and molecular simulation. Truhlar was also the founding Director of Graduate Studies of the innovative Scientific Computation Program. This interdisciplinary program involved new courses and faculty from several colleges in the University. In addition, he created and taught a Supercomputing Research Seminar course with invited lecturers from around the country.

Advising and Mentoring

Professor Truhlar is deeply committed to mentoring and advising students in their work. To date, he has advised the thesis research of 62 Ph. D. theses in chemistry and chemical physics. In additional he has sponsored 102 postdoctoral associates, hosted several visiting scholars, and advised several graduate students from China who do part of their doctoral thesis research under his supervision.

In addition, Truhlar involves his students as coauthors of articles. He has published 1,240 peer-reviewed journal articles and more than 80 book chapters. About 1,300 of these have graduate students and/or postdoctoral associates as coauthors.

When graduate students join his group, Truhlar initially walks them through a project that is simpler than a full doctoral project so they can learn the fundamentals behind research in his group, and so that they can accomplish some significant research by the middle of their second year in graduate school. Because of the variety of research taking place in Truhlar's group, students then have flexibility in choosing thesis projects that mesh with the area in which they are most likely to succeed and that best fits their developing interests.

Truhlar makes time for his students and has been honored for his roles as a mentor and adviser with the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Outstanding Adviser Award, the Council of Graduate Students’ Outstanding Faculty Award, and the Outstanding Advising and Mentoring Award.

Junwei Lucas Bao, Ph.D., earned his doctorate working with Professor Truhlar in 2018 and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University. He wrote about his mentor: "Professor Truhlar is a wonderful adviser. He is amazingly knowledgeable about theoretical chemistry. Whenever I have questions on my research, he can immediately point to the critical references for me. When I am lost in the jungle of the literature, he can quickly show me the big picture and direct me to the right path. He is always available to his students. . . . I am influenced tremendously by Professor Truhlar on theoretical chemistry and on how to do problems and find challenging and exciting questions. His passion for science and his attitude to solving problems have set a perfect role model for his students."

Professor Truhlar develops deep connections with his students. Pragya Verma, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab. She reflects: "Professor Truhlar connects very well with his students and postdocs irrespective of their cultural background, level of knowledge, and personality. He always expresses thankfulness for every contribution we make to his group. . . . He lives through the pressure of both research and presentations with his students and tries his best to do everything that he can to minimize stress for his students.”

About Professor Truhlar

Professor Truhlar has gleaned numerous accolades to his research and contributions to the profession such as the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Theoretical Chemistry, American Physical Society Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics, ACS Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research, ACS Peter Debye Award for Physical Chemistry, Schrödinger Medal of The World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists, Dudley R. Herschbach Award for Excellence in Research in Collision Dynamics, Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Dynamics Award, National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Reviewing, Distinguished Alumnus Award of St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, and the Minnesota Award of the Minnesota Section of the ACS. In the spring of 2015, the ACS honored Truhlar with a symposium for his contributions to and advancement of theory and computation in the understanding of the structure, energetics, and dynamics of molecules in gas phase, macromolecular, and condensed-phase systems.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists, and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute as well as an honorary fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society and the Council of the Chemical Research Society of India.

Truhlar earned a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from Saint Mary's College (now St. Mary’s University of Minnesota) and a doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1970. He joined the Department of Chemistry faculty in 1969. In 2010 he received a Doctor honoris causa from Technical University of Lodz, Poland.

In addition to Regents Professor Truhlar, eight additional professors in the Department of Chemistry have earned the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education,  including Professor Philippe Buhlmann, Professor Peter Carr, Professor Christopher Cramer (now University Vice President for Research), Professor Marc Hillmyer, Professor Thomas Hoye, Regents Professor Timothy Lodge, Regents Professor Lawrence Que Jr., and Professor J. Ilja Siepmann.