JSNN welcomes Dr. Yirong Mo as Chair of the Department of Nanoscience
The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering is pleased to welcome Dr. Yirong Mo as Chair of the Department of Nanoscience at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He also joins as a tenured Full Professor at the Department of Nanoscience. Dr. Mo has a distinguished record of accomplishments. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts in leading scientific journals, including Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Journal of the American Chemical Society and Angewandte Chemie International Edition. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry and ChemistrySelect. His research work has previously been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Keck Foundation.
Dr. Mo’s primary research interests are in the development of novel theoretical and computational methods and the application of these methods to scientific problems at the molecular scale and the nanoscale. His major accomplishment is the proposal and development of the block-localized wave function (BLW) method, the simplest variant of the valence bond (VB) theory, which can be used to study the bonding nature of molecules including probing intra- or inter-molecular electron transfer. He also works on computational simulations of nanoscale and biological systems including exploring mechanisms in enzymatic catalysis.
In addition, Dr. Mo has extensive experience working with international research teams including researchers at the Erlangen-Nuremberg University and Bonn University, as a Humboldt Fellow, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Xiamen University. Amongst his accomplishments, include being named an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow and a German Academic Exchange Senior Visiting Fellow.
Dr. Mo received a Bachelor’s, Masters and Doctorate degree from Xiamen University. He completed postdoctoral studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo and at the University of Minnesota.