Prof. Robert Topper, Professor of Chemistry in Cooper Union’s Albert Nerken School of Engineering, and a group of Cooper Union engineering students participated in the 9th Virtual Winter School on Computational Chemistry, or VWSCC in February 2023. Prof. Topper served on the VWSCC organizing committee this year, and the meeting was also attended by engineering students Abdula Ali EE ‘25, Ubaidullah Hassan ChE ‘25, Bob Lee ChE ‘23, and Mohammed Rhakib ChE ‘24.  

The VWSCC is held annually and is completely free and open to all participants, presenting a unique opportunity for scientists around the world to fully participate in an international scientific conference on an equal footing with one another. “I view this kind of no-barriers conference experience as highly consonant with Peter Cooper’s vision for this institution,” says Topper. “It’s all about bringing people together and helping each other get to the next level.” The School consisted of invited talks by prominent scientists from around the world who volunteered to speak, as well as workshops on the use of research-grade molecular modeling software, two panel discussions, and four virtual reality poster sessions. Topper led a panel discussion entitled “How do we generate good ideas in science?“ and also led one of the virtual reality sessions.  

According to Topper, “In the past, I was heavily involved with organizing a series of free online conferences in computational chemistry known as the Electronic Computational Chemistry Conference. Since then, the team of volunteers organizing and hosting the VWSCC came up with a terrific, next-generation successor to our original efforts. When I found out about it last year, I was so pleased with what they were doing that that I could not resist the urge to volunteer to help out. They are doing great work and their enthusiasm is highly contagious.”  

The Virtual Winter School on Computational Chemistry covers a broad range of topics in computational chemistry, a field which has more and more impact each year in chemistry and chemical engineering. The extended lecture format allows ample time to cover both introductory material on topics as well as the latest research developments. The 2023 Organizing Team members were VWSCC Chair Rebecca Ingle (University College London, UK), Cate Anstöter (University of York, UK), Dominique Buyens (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Henrique Castro (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), Milica Feldt (Leibnitz Institute for Catalysis, Germany), Rika Kobayashi (Australian National University), Julianna Olah (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary), Goedele Roos (Universite de Lille, France), and Robert Topper (The Cooper Union, USA).