Braden received his B.S. in physics and B.S. in chemistry in 2018 and his M.S. in physics in 2020, all from North Dakota State University (NDSU). There he worked primarily with Prof. Svetlana Kilina (Dept. of Chemistry) in the simulation of optical properties of defected carbon nanotube systems. He also performed work under the supervision of Prof. Alan Denton (Dept. of Physics) on the molecular dynamics simulation of microgel particles, studying their structure and stability in the presence of effective charges in solution. During his M.S. he worked closely with Prof. Andrei Kryjevski (Department of Physics) implementing many-body perturbation theory techniques to explore multiple exciton generation in fluorescent carbon nanotube systems.
Starting in 2018, under the supervision of Dr. Sergei Tretiak and Dr. Brendan Gifford, Braden has had the opportunity to attend summer internships at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working in close collaboration with experimentalists Dr. Han Htoon and Dr. Steve Doorn at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. Through this collaboration, Braden works to answer questions regarding experimental phenomena using state-of-the-art computations involving time-dependent density functional theory and non-adiabatic excited state dynamics.
His current interests in the Huo group are centered on light-matter interaction using non-relativistic cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) simulation of molecular systems. He is also interested in mixed quantum classical non-adiabatic dynamics and its applications to on-the-fly simulation. In both of these topics, he aims to address fundamental questions regarding the methodologies and their effects on subsequent observables in a variety of molecular systems and situations. Leveraging the strong connections to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Braden works closely with Dr. Sergei Tretiak and Dr. Yu Zhang on the simulation of polaritonic many-body method development and applications.
North Dakota State University
B. S. in Physics 2018
B. S. in Chemistry 2018
North Dakota State University
M. S. in Physics 2020
University of Rochester
M. S. in Physics 2022
Ph.D. in Physics (Expected 2025)