Autschbach named UB Distinguished Professor

Jochen Autschbach, Larkin Professor in the Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a UB Distinguished Professor.

The UB Distinguished Professor designation — not to be confused with the SUNY Distinguished Professor designation, a rank above that of full professor awarded by the SUNY trustees — was created by the Office of the Provost to recognize full professors who have achieved true distinction and are leaders in their fields.

It is open to faculty members who have been a full professor for at least five years and who have achieved national or international prominence and a distinguished reputation within their field through significant contributions to the research/scholarly literature or through artistic performance or achievement in the fine arts.

Autschbach develops new quantum theoretical methods and computer programs that can be used to calculate, from first principles, the properties of molecular chemical systems. He studies the interaction of molecules with light and other types of electromagnetic fields, exploring how these interactions relate to molecular structure and chemical bonding. Colleagues call his research “groundbreaking,” and say his work “continues to innovate and open new areas in chemistry to computational study.”

Autschbach is the first scientist to develop and apply a complete working theoretical framework and software for reliable relativistic first-principles electronic structure methods for nuclear magnetic resonance parameters of small and large molecules. His research has allowed, for the first time, the entire periodic table to be subjected to first-principles calculations. He was also the first to predict NMR chemical shifts of carbon nanotubes from first principles.

A prolific scholar, Autschbach has published 277 peer-reviewed publications, with nearly 12,000 citations and an h-index of 66, according to Google Scholar.

He has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator for research awards totaling $4.4 million, including three active grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy on which he is principal investigator.

Among his numerous honors are a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities; a UB Exceptional Scholar Award, Young Investigator category; and an NSF CAREER Award.