Research Group
Martin Rahm
Martin received his Master degree in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in 2006. He remained to complete a PhD in Physical Chemistry in 2011, with the Quantum Chemistry group of Tore Brinck and the polymer chemistry group of Eva Malmström. During 2011 – 2013, Martin worked as a Senior Research Associate at the University of Southern California, and pursued modeling and synthesis work in the group of Karl Christe. From 2014 – 2016, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the combined theoretical chemistry and condensed matter physics group of Roald Hoffmann and Neil Ashcroft at Cornell University. He is currently an Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology. Outside of science he enjoys martial arts, all kinds of climbing, hiking and snowboarding.
Hilda Sandström
Hilda received her Master in Chemical Engineering with Engineering Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in 2017. She was recruited as a graduate student in Martin Rahm’s group the same year to study prebiotic polymer chemistry using quantum chemistry methods. Interested in scientific questions related to the origin and nature of life, she enjoys working on the border between physics, chemistry and biology. Outside of science, she loves good fiction, in books and on the screen, as well as arts and the outdoors.
Mårten Skogh
Marco Cappelletti
Francesco Sessa
Phalgun Lolur
Phalgun received his MS, Chemical Engineering (2010-2013) and PhD, theoretical chemistry (2011-2016) from Missouri University of Science and Technology. His focus of work during grad studies was developing highly accurate multi-reference potential energy surfaces to study reaction kinetics, dynamics and spectroscopy relevant to atmospheric, interstellar and organic chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Richard Dawes. After his PhD, Phalgun moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2016 to work with Prof. William Green at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher. At MIT, Phalgun worked in the areas of physical property estimations for pharmaceutical compounds (focusing on solubilities and pKa estimations), sulfur chemistry (working on hydrogen production from hydrogen sulfide). He also has experience in data processing and applying machine learning principles for chemistry. Phalgun then moved to Gothenburg, Sweden in 2019 to work with Martin Rahm at Chalmers University of Technology. He works on the OpenSuperQ project and aims to integrate state of the art quantum chemistry methods on quantum computing hardware. Outside of research, Phalgun enjoys hiking, cooking, jazz music from the big band era, lindy hop, martial arts and traveling.
Fernando Izquierdo Ruiz
Fernando received his MS in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling in 2014 from the University of Oviedo. He earned a joint Ph.D. from the University of Oviedo and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2018, where he worked on the study of clathrates hydrates under the supervision of J. M. Recio, J. Contreras-García and O. Prieto-Ballesteros. After his Ph.D. he did a postdoc at the U. Complutense of Madrid for 18 months, studying interfaces between ice/air and other substances by means of the Lifshitz theory of van der Waals forces. Fernando’s scientific interests are high pressure chemistry, planetary science and astrobiology. At Chalmers he is working on developing the new field of Computational Astrobiology.
Kjell Jorner
Kjell Jorner is an international postdoc fellow in the group of Martin Rahm but based at the University of Toronto, Canada, in the group of Alán Aspuru-Guzik. His research is about using artificial intelligence and machine learning in the design and optimization of molecular materials and chemical reactivity. Applications of this research are very general and include for example accelerated development of new light-absorbing materials and new tools in chemical biology research. Kjell Jorner is a recipient of an International Postdoc Grant from the Swedish Research Council.
Alvaro Lobato Fernandez
Alvaro received his MSc in Chemical Physics at the Complutense University of Madrid and earned his PhD in the group of Valentín Garcia Baonza. During grad studies he was developing new mechanochemical models to understand how chemical bonding is modified under extreme pressure conditions. After the PhD studies he did a postdoc at the University of Oviedo for 8 months, studying pressure phase transitions in flexible materials. Alvaro is now a postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers, focused on high pressure chemistry and chemical bonding analysis. Outside of research, Alvaro enjoys cooking, rock and jazz music, hiking and reading books.
Rahmlab 