Dr. Prajay Patel received his undergraduate education in Chemistry and Mathematics
at the University of
Texas at Arlington. While an undergraduate, he had the opportunity to study computational
chemistry, a
field at the intersection of chemistry, physics, math, and computer science. This
experience along with
working as a tutor for the math and chemistry departments were the motivating factors
to pursue graduate
studies after completing coursework in 2014. At the University of North Texas, he
joined Professor
Angela K. Wilson’s team, and following a move to Michigan State University in 2016,
he focused on the
development and application of effective quantum chemical strategies targeting high
accuracy
thermochemistry and organometallic catalysis. Upon receiving his PhD in 2019, he did
his postdoctoral
appointment with Dr. Cong Liu and Dr. Massimiliano Delferro at Argonne National Laboratory
where he
worked on modeling X-ray absorption spectra of surface organometallic catalysts with
data science
approaches.
His research interests at UD include incorporating machine learning and data science
approaches into
chemistry to predict chemical relationships and dynamics pertaining to catalysis,
software development
for chemical data analysis, and collaborative efforts both within and external to
UD.
Dr. Patel joined the faculty in August 2022 and primarily teaches the physical chemistry
sequence and the
Basic Ideas in Forensic Chemistry course. Special topic courses that he would develop
and teach include
computational chemistry and Python for Scientific Data Visualization.
Prajay Patel Ph.D.
