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Chemistry Welcomes New Faculty Member Dr. Jolene Reid

The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jolene Reid as an assistant professor in the area of Machine Learning in Chemistry. She will join the department on July 1st.

Dr. Reid received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Cambridge and is currently an NSF Marie Curie fellow working at the University of Utah on combining machine learning with statistical and computational techniques in modeling molecular structure effects on experimental outcomes. Her training is in synthesis, machine learning, chemical theory and computation

Her 2019 two-author Nature paper titled "Holistic prediction of enantioselectivity in asymmetric catalysis” proposes an application of machine learning to develop new paths for chemical catalysis and organic synthesis. Algorithms will aim to provide input on what on known reactions. This information would then be used to predict the outcomes of unexplored reactions. This work hopes to pave the way for machine learning in chemistry and unpredictable reaction pathways. Machine learning has been used in industry applications and Dr. Reid’s work  provides an avenue for machine learning in chemistry.

The Reid group will use both computation and experiment to understand and predict reaction outcomes in organic chemistry.