Dr. Jeremy Kua Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Office: SCST 381 Phone: (619) 260-7970 e-mail Address:

Courses Taught in Fall 2024
CHEM152: General Chemistry I Honors
CHEM311: Physical Chemistry I (Quantum Chemistry)
Students, you can access course web pages when they're ready through Canvas.

Sample Course Web Pages from Previous Years

What is computational chemistry? Look at some of the Introduction links in my Resources for Computational Chemistry page.

What is self-assembly? Here's what Wikipedia says. See some nice pictures and descriptions of self-assembly in the kitchen and more.

Current/potential projects for 2024-25
Interested in working on a research project in computational chemistry? Come by my office and talk to me. [Potential credit for Chem 496 during the semester; funding available during the summer.]

At present, the predominant activity of the Kua research group is the construction of Free Energy Maps for prebiotic chemistry.
In particular, we are:
1. Generating baseline maps for the co-oligomerization and reactions of small molecules involved in prebiotic chemistry.
2. Studying how environmental changes (pH, concentration, temperature, presence of ions in solution) away from standard conditions perturb the free energies.
3. Developing a Group Addivity scheme for free energies of polar organics in aqueous solution.
4. Developing a quantitative measure of molecular complexity.
5. Analyzing the genesis and sustainability of proto-metabolic systems.

Kua Research Lab Members Only Login here

Publications

Computational Research Experience (i.e., projects I've worked on throughout my career)

A Few Interesting Science Links