About me

Hi, I am Chong Sun [孙 (Sun1) 冲 (Chong1) in Chinese], a theoretical and computational chemist. I am currently a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research and a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University with Prof. Gustavo Scuseria. I earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2021, advised by Prof. Garnet Kin-Lic Chan focusing on developing numerical methods for strongly correlated systems. My dissertation is on Finite-Temperature Simulations of Strongly Correlationed Systems. I worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Alan Aspuru-Guzik on interdisciplinary research for electronic structures.

Research Interest

My goal as a scientist is to expand our knowledge of the microscopic world (molecules, proteins, polymers, and solid-state materials) with numerical tools. I come from a quantum-chemistry background, where I developed my physical and chemical intuition in approaching problems, and received rigorous training in mathematical derivation, numerical analysis and programming. Later I was exposed to quantum computing (QC) and deep learning (DL), two rising fields that we can benefit from. Having knowledge in QC and DL not only expanded my tool boxes, but also made me re-examine my role as a computational scientist.

My long-term goal is to build a computational ecosystem illustrated below. I will focus on identifying and designing the best numerical tools for various chemical systems, and incorporate generative models to support de novo design of functional molecules and materials. In particular, I will push the discovery of renewable energy and quantum materials, which in turn will support the hardware development. With this spiraling growth, I anticipate a stable computational ecosystem in the near future.