Chenchen Song
· Assistant ProfessorUniversity of California, Davis · Chemistry
Active 1987–2026
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About
Chenchen Song is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at UC Davis, appointed in 2021. His research focuses on theoretical chemistry, specifically on developing quantum chemistry and excited state dynamics methods from first principles to understand photochemical processes and their practical applications. His work combines quantum chemistry methods with advances in computer science, such as specialized hardware like graphical processing units (GPUs), and mathematical techniques like tensor factorizations. His research interests include applying these theoretical tools to photochemistry in biological systems, such as bioluminescence and visual processes, as well as renewable energy applications like light harvesting complexes. Dr. Song earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University in 2018, following his B.S. in Chemistry from Tsinghua University in 2012. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab from 2018 to 2021 before joining UC Davis. His contributions include developing new physical insights into computational methods such as XMS-CASPT2, state-averaged CASSCF, and polarizable models for simulating photoreactions in proteins and solvents. His work aims to provide a deeper understanding of photochemical processes through innovative theoretical approaches.
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Quantum mechanics
- Computational science
- Computational chemistry
- Computer graphics (images)
- Physical chemistry
- Parallel computing
- Mathematics
Selected publications
The Journal of Chemical Physics · 2023-01-03 · 13 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingThis paper presents a state-averaged complete active space self-consistent field (SA-CASSCF) in the atomic multipole optimized energetics for biomolecular application (AMOEBA) polarizable water model, which enables rigorous simulation of non-adiabatic molecular dynamics with nonequilibrium solvation effects. The molecular orbital and configuration interaction coefficients of the solute wavefunction, and the induced dipoles on solvent atoms, are solved by minimizing the state averaged energy vari…
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation · 2024-08-01 · 9 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingThis study presents the polarizable quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) embedding of the state-averaged complete active space self-consistent field (SA-CASSCF) in the atomic multipole optimized energetics for biomolecular applications (AMOEBA) force field for the purpose of studying photoreactions in protein environments. We describe two extensions of our previous work that combine SA-CASSCF with AMOEBA water models, allowing it to be generalized to AMOEBA models for proteins and other…
The Journal of Chemical Physics · 2024-03-25 · 3 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingThis paper introduces a spin-free formulation of the supporting subspace factorization [C. Song and T. J. Martínez, J. Chem. Phys. 149, 044108 (2018)], enabling a reduction in the computational scaling of the extended multi-state complete active space second-order perturbation (XMS-CASPT2) method for arbitrary spins. Compared to the original formulation that is defined in the spin orbitals and is limited to singlet states, the spin-free formulation in this work treats different spin states equiv…
The Journal of Chemical Physics · 2026-02-27
article1st authorCorrespondingThe two-level conical intersection of a molecule with an odd electron number in the absence of a magnetic field obeys time-reversal symmetry T2 = -1 (referred to as the T2 = -1 conical intersection) and has a five-dimensional branching space due to the Kramer degeneracy. Similar to how the conical intersection of a molecule in a magnetic field (T2 = 0) behaves as the Dirac monopole, the T2 = -1 conical intersection behaves as the Yang monopole, a mathematical generalization of the Dirac monopole…
DIRECT, a low-cost system for high-speed, low-noise imaging of fluorescent biological samples
arXiv (Cornell University) · 2022-12-08
preprintOpen accessA targeted imaging system has been developed for applications requiring recording from stationary samples at high spatiotemporal resolutions. It works by illuminating regions of interest in rapid sequence, and recording the signal from the whole field of view onto a single photodetector, and can be implemented at low cost on an existing microscope without compromising existing functionality. The system is characterized in terms of speed, spatial resolution, and tissue penetration depth, before b…
Frequent coauthors
- 91 shared
Todd J. Martı́nez
Stanford University
- 58 shared
Jeffrey B. Neaton
University of California, Berkeley
- 25 shared
Lee‐Ping Wang
University of California, Davis
- 18 shared
Edward G. Hohenstein
Science Wares (United States)
- 14 shared
Christoph Bannwarth
- 14 shared
B. Scott Fales
Pulse Biosciences (United States)
- 14 shared
Stefan Seritan
- 13 shared
Dongjiang Wu
Dalian University of Technology
Education
- 2018
Ph.D. in Chemistry, Chemistry
Stanford University
- 2012
B.S. in Chemistry, Chemistry
Tsinghua University
Awards & honors
- Francesca Miller Undergraduate Research Award
- R.B. Miller Research, Service, and Mentorship Award
- R. Bryan Miller Summer Graduate Fellowship
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