INQUIRY | SCHOLARSHIP, RESEARCH, AND CREATIVE WORK | REVIEW 2024 11 (CONTINUED ON PAGE 13) solutions to deal with the reclamation and repurposing of high-global warming potential (GWP) legacy refrigerants. These solutions are needed to prevent millions of metric tons of high-GWP refrigerants from leaking and illegally venting into the atmosphere. Working at the boundaries of various types of chemistry, the Fredin group seeks to uncover insights into the fundamental properties of a broad range of atomic to nanoscale materials and build computational models that are both descriptive and predictive. “We’re looking at a computer and asking the computer a scientific question, and you have to ask the question right, and you have to set it up correctly. All of those are the same as running an experiment. You have to set up the experiment, you have to control all the variables. We have the same thing, it’s just that in the end of the day, the final experiment is run by the computer.” journalism Artificial Intelligence, Elections and Democracy It’s a tale as old as Democracy, says associate professor of journalism Jeremy Littau—political candidates lying about the life, accomplishments or plans of opponents to discredit them or make themselves look like the better choice. It may seem surprising, but courts have long ruled that this type of false political speech is legal under the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech. Now, due to the easy accessibility of the technology artificial intelligence (AI), political candidates—or their supporters—can take lying much further than speaking or writing mistruths. They can try to sway public opinion by creating very believable fake images, video and systems. Her team uses supercomputing power and method development to increase the reliability of experimental comparison and theoretically predicted materials from atomic to nanoscale. From this, they develop models to investigate fundamental electronic processes. Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), she and her team use theoretical quantum mechanics to understand the properties of chemical systems. Part of the group’s work seeks to understand the characteristics of new chemical structures, such as new molecular systems or nanoparticles. The other part is theoretical development using quantum mechanics. “Quantum mechanics is a theory in science that has been proven over and over to be exactly true,” says Fredin, who also holds a Sloan Fellowship. “My group calculates some of the largest structures that people can even run on supercomputers at this point in time. That means we have to make sure that we are both numerically accurate, but also chemically accurate.” Enter Fredin’s laboratory and you can forget the stereotypical chemistry environment. Fredin’s lab is a room of computers, connected to the high-performance computing center in Lehigh’s Fairchild-Martindale Library. “This is one of the best things about Lehigh, why I came here. It’s because the provost and the dean support the staff that run that facility,” she says. The group’s work allows Fredin the opportunity to partner with experimentalists working on both inorganic and organic materials, bridging physical chemistry, material science and nanotechnology. Her most recent work involves teaming with colleagues at Lehigh and other institutions as part of a $26 million NSF grant to develop confederate structure, as Arendt did, or simply a non-nationalist Jewish identity, as Benjamin and Celan did.” For each thinker, understanding life means understanding, or accepting equality, Lebovic says. His interest in studying temporality stems from his ethics: “I always believed in equality as a basic value.” “Time is the most important element of life and it’s what defines who we are as human beings.” In the end, time is the greatest equalizer. chemistry Modeling Electronic Processes With a changing climate, there is a need to develop more sustainable, environmentally friendly materials. Focusing on the development of models at the edge of theory and experiment, quantum chemist Lisa Fredin explores the chemical physics of catalytic materials to improve our fundamental understanding of emerging substances. Fredin, assistant professor of chemistry, uses quantum mechanics to study the photochemical, electronic and magnetic properties of materials and improve scientists’ understanding of the processes involved during catalysis, charge and energy transfer, and electron or hole transport in complex electronic Lisa Fredin Christa Neu
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