Biography

James Shee was born in Portland, OR and grew up in El Dorado Hills, CA.  He joined the faculty of Rice University in the summer of 2023 as a Norman Hackerman-Welch Assistant Professor of Chemistry.  Prior to this appointment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley working with Martin Head-Gordon.  James received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Columbia University in 2019, co-advised by Richard Friesner and David Reichman, and his A.B. in Chemistry from Princeton University in 2014.  Among other professional recognitions, Professor Shee received the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health in 2021, and the Louis Hammett Award for Excellence in Graduate Research from Columbia University in 2019. 

Research Summary

The Shee Lab aspires to develop and apply ab initio computational methods to accurately model chemical systems exhibiting both weak and strong correlations.  In particular, we are most interested in the electronic structure of transition metal and f-block compounds in the contexts of chemical catalysis and magnetism, and specialize in quantum Monte Carlo techniques and algorithms amenable to quantum computation.  Related research interests involve nuclear quantum effects, (anti)aromaticity, and the development of semi-classical potentials for the simulation of, e.g., metal cofactors in drug design and metal organic frameworks.