Kimberly Lawler-Sagarin

Some History

In the fall of 1985 I entered the freshman class at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Harvey Mudd was intense, challenging, and led to a huge sleep deficit. But it was also a tremendous amount of fun and boredom was non-existant. That's my friend Elizabeth Cohen posing for a picture (in 1989?). At Mudd, I was inspired to become a chemistry major by the very talented chemistry faculty. My introduction to research was in the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Van Hecke (VH), but then I fled the lab to work in the field of theoretical chemistry with Dr. Robert Cave. My fondness of Xena is either because of, or in spite of the fact that my humanities concentration was in classics.

I did my graduate work in Chemistry at Cornell University. The building in the photo is Baker Laboratory, which houses part of the Chemistry Department. At Cornell, I was a graduate student of Dr. Roald Hoffmann. Working in the Hoffmann Group provided me with the unique opportunity to interact with many scientists from all over the world. The picture at the left was taken at Roald's 60th birthday celebration. While in Ithaca, I was extremely disturbed by all that falling white stuff in the winter months. Here are some photos of what it is like when you have to dig your car out of the snow and are trying to make the best of it.

My unwillingness to call myself either a physical or inorganic chemist leads me to describe what I do as computational physical inorganic chemistry. But really, it just about chemical bonding and interesting molecules. Roald once described his graduate students as the weird subset of students who really love chemistry and quantum mechanics.