NT Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 2, 2014 Page: 3 of 12
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2,2014
NEWS 3
Chemistry professor earns national recognition
Steven James
Staff Writer
A ngela Wilson said her in-
/\ terest in chemistry first
A^started in high school,
where she had an older, experi-
enced chemistry teacher with a
very dry sense of humor.
She said that other than be-
ing a good teacher, he liked to
show off, which sometimes led
to mistakes. While cutting slices
of material into small pieces for
the class lab, he accidentally
dropped a piece of pure, white
sodium into some water near
him, which caused an explosion
that blew a hole into the ceiling.
“We had to evacuate,” she
said.
Fast forward to August, when
Wilson, now an associate chem-
istry professor at UNT, was named
the 2015 winner of the Francis
P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal,
awarded by the American Chem-
ical Society to women chemists
who make distinguished contri-
butions to the field.
“There’s been a lot of great
scientists who before me have
earned it,” Wilson said. “So I’m
just really kind of humbled by
that.”
Wilson is a computational
chemist. She said that besides
chemistry, computational chem-
istry also has elements of math-
ematics, physics and computer
science. Computational chemists
use computers to conduct exper-
iments and to look at models, as
opposed to conducting tradition-
al experiments in a laboratory.
Wilson’s research involves
quantum mechanics and how to
shorten calculation processes in
computational chemistry, which
was the focus of her dissertation.
“The calculations that we do in
quantum mechanics are so com-
plicated that you can only do the
equations exactly for one elec-
tron system,” she said. “Most ma-
terials have more than one elec-
tron. It was just a way to reduce
the amount of computer time re-
quired using some mathematical
methods.”
Other than improving com-
puter systems, Wilson has also
worked with pharmaceutical
companies to develop medicine
Chemistry professor Angela Wilson, right, cracks a joke before one of her students gives a presentation in the Chemistry Building. Wilson was recently announced
as the winner of the Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal. Photo Dillon Jones - Staff Photographer
for inflammatory diseases and
cancer.
She also did post-doctoral
work at Pacific Northwest Uni-
versity of Health Sciences, in
which she worked with a group
of researchers to develop meth-
ods for solving environmental
problems.
They conducted their experi-
ments at the Handford Nuclear
Reservation in Washington,
which had waste flowing into the
Pacific Ocean.
Wilson is also in charge of the
Wilson Group, a group of under-
graduate and graduate students
who she employs to conduct re-
search.
“I love interacting with my stu-
dents—my research group,” Wil-
son said. “I just enjoy watching
them develop and learn about the
research, and then actually get
to the point where they’re now
gaining jobs in the workforce. It’s
nice to see how much they have
learned about the field and how
long they’ve progressed.”
The students in the Wilson
Group said they came to UNT
for the computational chemistry
program, which Wilson has been
a part of for years.
“She puts a lot of time into
working with her graduate stu-
dents,” chemistry doctoral can-
didate Michael Jones said. “More
bank for my buck, and Dr. Wilson
has a reputation for being a really
good professor.”
Chemistry doctoral student
Chris South said that Wilson of-
ten makes time for her students,
which is not common for gradu-
ate students.
“I had actually heard of UNT’s
computational chemistry pro-
gram while I was doing my un-
dergraduate at TCU,” South said.
“It’s really nice working for her.
She’s a really good professor.”
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Wylie, Melissa. NT Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 2, 2014, newspaper, October 2, 2014; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth635137/m1/3/?q=MELISSA: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.