James Shee
Norman Hackerman-Welch Investigator
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Email: james.shee@rice.edu
Faculty member in the Department of Chemistry, and joint appointed with the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley. Advisor: Martin Head-Gordon
Ph.D., Chemical Physics, Columbia University, 2019. Advisors: Richard Friesner & David Reichman
A.B., Chemistry, Princeton University, 2014. Advisor: Annabella Selloni
Personal Bio
James was born in Portland, OR and grew up in El Dorado Hills, CA. After high school, James deferred his college admission for three years to dance with the San Francisco Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada. At Princeton, while discovering the joys of spring magnolias, Beethoven, opera, and investing, he resolved to dive into quantum theory after a glimpse of its philosophical and chemical implications. As a graduate student at Columbia, James could be found writing a quantum Monte Carlo code, dancing on NYC stages with various professional groups, at Yankee stadium, biking or playing volleyball in Riverside Park. At Berkeley, outside of lab James enjoyed playing tennis, spending time with family, and chasing sunsets.
Selected Honors and Awards
Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2021
Louis Hammett Award for Excellence in Graduate Research, Columbia University, 2019 ("for the most outstanding Ph.D. student in his/her final year in recognition of excellent fundamental studies in chemical research")
NSF GRFP Honorable Mention, 2016
Blanche R. and David Kasindorf Fellowship in Physical Chemistry, 2015-2016
Invited and Contributed Talks
Upcoming: Telluride Workshop on Stochastic Electronic Structure Methods (June 2025)
Upcoming: Emerging Excited-State Methods in Electronic Structure, Toulouse (April 2025)
American Chemical Society Southwest Regional Meeting (October 2024)
Correlated Electronic Structure Faraday Discussion (July 2024)
NC State Quantum Simulation Workshop (November 2023)
American Chemical Society Fall 2023, San Francisco (August 2023)
Strong Correlation in Molecules, Satellite symposium of the ICQC, Znojmo (June 2023)
Stochastic Electronic Structure Methods, Telluride (June 2023)
Seminar, New York University (February 2023)
Seminar, University of Maryland (February 2023)
Seminar, Princeton University (January 2023)
Seminar, NC State University (January 2023)
Seminar, Brown University (December 2022)
Seminar, Rice University (December 2022)
World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists 2020, Vancouver (July 2022)
American Chemical Society Spring 2022, San Diego (March 2022)
Pitzer Center Theoretical Chemistry Seminar, UC Berkeley (September 2021)
International Workshop on Recent Developments in Electronic Structure (July 2021)
Seminar at IBM (March 2021)
Electronic Structure Discussion Group, Cambridge University (January 2021)
Annual Meeting, Simons Many Electron Collaboration (February 2019)
Schrodinger Inc. (January 2019)
Physical Chemistry Seminar, Columbia University (November 2018)
AFQMC Workshop, Flatiron Institute (February 2018)
Collaborators
Andriy Nevidomskyy, Lea Nienhaus, Raúl Hernández Sánchez, Peter Rossky, Peter Wolynes (Rice)
Javier Robledo Moreno, Mario Motta, Kevin Sung (IBM)
Daniel Kats (Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research)
Andreas Hansen (Bonn)
Martin Head-Gordon, K. Birgitta Whaley (UC Berkeley)
Richard Friesner, David Reichman (Columbia)
Shiwei Zhang (Flatiron Institute)
Hung Vuong (Columbia), Marvin Friede, Tim Schramm (Bonn)
Media
Rice Thresher: "From ballet shoes to beakers: James Shee bridges art and science"
Rice News: "From ballet to quantum chemistry: Rice’s James Shee dances between worlds"
JACS Spotlight: "Doing the (Ultrafast) Twist in Artificial Photosynthesis"
MetLiveArts Digital Premiere (James @40:56 on... but don't miss the solo @54:03)
