Nancy Makri

Nancy Makri is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Chair of the Department of Chemistry, Professor of Chemistry, and Professor of Physics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are theoretical quantum dynamics of condensed phase processes, with applications to tunneling and coherence phenomena, proton and electron transfer reactions in solution and biological systems, and excitation energy transfer in molecular aggregates.

Makri has pioneered path integral methods for simulating quantum dynamical processes with unprecedented accuracy, circumventing the exponential scaling with system size of the quantum mechanical equations. In several cases, Makri’s methods offered the first viable algorithm that does not involve uncontrolled approximations. Makri’s calculations have helped quantify the role of quantum mechanical effects in chemical or biological reactions and the dynamics of cold fluids. For many years, Makri’s results on prototype systems have served as valuable benchmarks in the chemical dynamics community, and her algorithms are used worldwide to perform highly accurate simulations of quantum dynamical processes.

Makri received her B.S. from the University of Athens in 1985 and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. She spent two years as a Junior Fellow at Harvard before joining the faculty at Illinois in the spring of 1992.