Sharon Hammes-Schiffer

In her study, published in September 2016, Hammes-Schiffer contributed towards discovering the effects of the active site of the magnesium ion in the Scissile Phosphate cofactor complex. She discovered that rather than the magnesium ion lying in the center of the complex, the ion lies in a separate site, termed the Hoogsteen Face, where it lowers the pKa of the complex in order to facilitate a deprotonation reaction necessary for a self-cleavage reaction.

Hammes-Schiffer has also pioneered work in what she calls the Nuclear-Electronic Orbital Method (NEO) which allows for a more accurate estimate of nuclear properties such as density, geometry, frequencies, electronic coupling, and nuclear motions. As described in her paper, “Incorporation of Nuclear Quantum effects in electronic structure,” Radial basis function kernel, a gaussian algorithm used to support vector machines, is applied to determine electronic and molecular orbitals. The NEO approach is specifically applicable in determining the exact mechanisms of hydrogen transfer reactions while accounting for other variables such as quantum tunneling and zero point energy. Hammes-Schiffer claims that the NEO approach is significantly advantageous over other methods that incorporate nuclear quantum effects because of the method’s ability to calculate vibrational states, its avoidance of Born–Oppenheimer approximation and its apparent and inherent incorporation of quantum effects.

Hammes-Schiffer is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2010), the American Chemical Society (2011), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2013), the National Academy of Sciences (2013), and the Biophysical Society (2015). She was elected as a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science in 2014.

Hammes-Schiffer held positions on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame as Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry (1995-2000) and at Pennsylvania State University (2000-2012). As of 2012 she joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as Swanlund Professor of Chemistry where she leads the Hammes-Schiffer Research Group. Hammes-Schiffer is an author or co-author on nearly 200 papers, and has given more than 200 invited talks.

Hammes-Schiffer completed her B.A. in chemistry at Princeton University in 1988. She completed her Ph.D. in chemistry at Stanford University in 1993 after working with Hans C. Andersen. She then worked with John C. Tully at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a postdoctoral research scientist.

Sharon Hammes-Schiffer (born May 27, 1966) is a physical chemist who has contributed to theoretical and computational chemistry. She is currently the John Gamble Kirkwood Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. She has served as senior editor and deputy editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry and advisory editor for Theoretical Chemistry Accounts. Since As of 1 January 2015 she is editor-in-chief of Chemical Reviews.