Justin Talbot — 2025 Besley Award Winner

The winner of the 2025 Nick Besley Award is Prof. Justin Talbot! The award committee is delighted to recognize him for his excellent contributions towards the computational vibrational spectroscopy of hydrated ions and the development of efficient methods for nonadiabatic dynamics simulations in Q-Chem.

Prof. Talbot earned his BS in physics and applied mathematics and his PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Utah, where he worked with Prof. Ryan Steele in applications and methods development for vibrational structure theory. He then did a postdoc at UC Berkeley, where he worked with Prof. Martin Head-Gordon, Dr. Stephen Cotton, and Prof. Bill Miller to study electronic structure and nonadiabatic molecular dynamics. He is now an assistant professor at Clemson University, where he leads a research group focused on ab initio electronic structure methods and molecular dynamics simulations, with applications in solar and green energy. He has also made significant contributions to Q-Chem specifically, including development of novel methods for computational vibrational spectroscopy and nonadiabatic dynamics.

The Nick Besley Award was established to recognize excellence in the development or application of new methods for computational spectroscopy in the Q-Chem open-teamware community project. It commemorates the contributions of Prof. Nick Besley, who is remembered for his multi-faceted contributions to electronic excited-state theory and methodology, with particular application to the prediction and rationalization of X-ray spectra.

Justin will be giving a special webinar on July 31, 2025 about his work.

Congratulations, Justin!