Principal Investigator

Sijia S. Dong

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Affiliated Faculty, Department of Chemical Engineering and Department of Physics

Member, Institute for Chemical Imaging of Living Systems

Core Member, Quantum Materials and Sensing Institute

Affiliated Member, Institute for Experiential AI

Northeastern University

Boston, MA

s.dong (AT) northeastern.edu

322 ISEC

Northeastern Faculty Profile

ORCID | Google Scholar | LinkedIn | Twitter | Bluesky

About

Sijia Dong is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University.

Sijia is passionate about accelerating science using computation and automation. She received her PhD in Chemistry from California Institute of Technology in 2017, advised by Prof. William A. Goddard III, where she developed a first-principles-based and data-driven computational method to predict the structures of proteins that are crucial drug targets for many diseases. She carried out her postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota with Prof. Donald G. Truhlar and Prof. Laura Gagliardi, and then at Argonne National Laboratory with Prof. Giulia Galli. Her postdoctoral work was to use and develop quantum chemical methods and workflows to study the photochemistry of molecules and materials. She developed machine learning methods to accelerate electronic structure theory for studying light-matter interactions.

Research in the Dong Lab focuses on developing and applying physics-based and data-driven computational methods on both classical and quantum computers to accelerate chemical discoveries, especially on leveraging microenvironment tuning to design new chemistry and physics. Sijia has been selected a Scialog Fellow for Automating Chemical Laboratories by Research Corporation for Science Advancement, has won the Northeastern University College of Science Excellence in Mentorship Award, and has a National Institutes of Health Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigators. Sijia is also a Chair of the Early Career Board of the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation.

Appointments

  • 2021-present Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University

  • 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Appointee, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory (Advisor: Prof. Giulia Galli)

  • 2017-2019 Postdoctoral Associate, University of Minnesota (Advisors: Prof. Donald G. Truhlar and Prof. Laura Gagliardi)

Education

  • Ph.D. in Chemistry, Minor in Computational Science and Engineering, California Institute of Technology (2017)

  • B.Sc., First Class Honours, Major in Chemistry, Minor in Mathematics, The University of Hong Kong (2010)

Selected Awards and Honors

  • 2024: Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigators, National Institutes of Health

  • 2024: College of Science Excellence in Mentorship Award, Northeastern University

  • 2024: Scialog Fellow for Automating Chemical Laboratories, Research Corporation for Science Advancement