Jérôme Gonthier received his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry from EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) in Switzerland. He then moved to the US where he performed a first post-doc with Prof. David Sherrill at Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA) and a second post-doc with Prof. Martin Head-Gordon at U.C. Berkeley. His research has focused on the accurate quantification and understanding of intermolecular interactions through both perturbative and variational energy decomposition analysis methods. As a quantum application scientist at Zapata Computing, he mainly works on chemistry-related applications and algorithms on quantum computers.
Although I first pursued a career in chemistry, I was always interested in computer science as well. Quantum Computing is a way to combine my interest in writing software with my interest in quantum mechanics. This is also a very exciting field, with a lot of activity and a lot of potential applications!
I dream of having a general method to solve the electronic structure of large strongly correlated systems, for example metalloprotein active sites.
I love cheese and visiting new places, especially with my wife.
That I am a certified instructor in Vo-vietnam, a vietnamese martial art.
Invisibility. I’m very good at moving silently and have accidentally scared people on occasion, by just being there without them noticing.