Teresa Head-Gordon

Chemical transformations rarely occur in a single homogeneous aqueous phase, but instead occur in niches, crevices, and impurity sites at confining interfaces between two or more phases of gases, liquids or solids. The effects of interfaces on molecular properties are ubiquitously present across diverse fields spanning nanochemistry and chemical (bio)catalysis, environmental and energy sciences, geosciences, and functional materials. Fundamentally, interfaces can alter solvent and solution compositions and phases to reformulate the transition states and pathways of chemical reactions and underlying transport mechanisms. I will introduce new theoretical models and methods, and applications to examine interfacial problems for reactive chemistry, to investigate and formulate recent hypotheses around microdroplet chemistry and most recently the molecular origin of toxicity in commodity microplastics.