Charles C. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Chemistry
Education
Indiana University--Bloomington, Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry, 1982
University of Missouri--Columbia, B.S. in Chemistry, 1978
Research Interests
Computational methods exist for accurately predicting properties in species containing covalent interactions. The accurate computation of the energies of weak forces, however, is more challenging and at the center of Chuck Kirkpatrick, Ph.D.'s efforts. The weak intermolecular forces of interest fall into two categories: (1) ion-neutral gas interactions and (2) interactions between aromatics and ionic or neutral species. Both of these systems share the problem of computing accurate energies within the limits of modern hardware and software resources. Kirkpatrick's research utilizes GAUSSIAN, GAMESS, NWChem, SAPT, and other programs on high-performance systems for this work.
Additional computational projects include (1) modeling of the physiochemical properties of organometallic compounds, and (2) design and implementation of searchable databases containing RNA structural information.