Contact Information
myerscou@illinois.edu
(217) 300-4463
Department of Chemistry
350E Noyes Lab
600 S. Mathews Avenue
MC-712
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Areas
Biography
Prof. Jackson is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and leader of the AI for Materials Group at UIUC's Beckman Institute. He obtained his B.A. in Physics from Wesleyan University in 2011, followed by a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 2016, working with Prof. Mark Ratner and Prof. Lin Chen. He was subsequently a Named Fellow and Assistant Scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, working with Prof. Juan de Pablo. His research group works on problems at the interface of soft materials, quantum mechanics, and machine learning, with specific interests in the development of coarse-grained electronic structure methods, conjugated materials theory, and sustainable polymer design. His group's efforts have been recognized by awards including the DOE Early Career Award, the Dreyfus Machine Learning in the Chemical Science & Engineering Award, the AIChE COMSEF Young Investigator Award for Modeling and Simulation, and the UIUC School of Chemical Sciences Faculty Teaching Award.
Research Interests
Coarse-graining, multiscale simulations, electronic processes, soft materials, machine learning, polymer design
Research Description
The Jackson Lab understands and designs electronic processes in soft materials, with a strong emphasis on method developments that enable accelerated electronic predictions in disordered systems. Recent research efforts have included:
- Modeling mixed electron and ion conduction in conjugated polymers for bioelectronic applications.
- Creating generative AI models for synthetically-accessible polymer design.
- Accelerating predictions of bond rupture-induced failure in polymer networks.
- Designing deep learning algorithms that extract essential molecular degrees of freedom for electronic structure predictions.
- Simulating molecular doping in organic semiconductors with reactive molecular modeling methods.
- Developing methods that bypass backmapping in multiscale workflows.
- Building a Martini model for electronic structure predictions.
- AI-guided closed-loop optimization and knowledge extraction for experimental campaigns.
- Identifying new sourcing and reaction pathways for organic materials design.
Awards and Honors
AIChE COMSEF Young Investigator Award
School of Chemical Sciences Faculty Teaching Award
ACS OpenEye/Cadence Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry
Early Career Board, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
Research Corporation Scialog Fellow for Automating Chemical Laboratories
Department of Energy Early Career Program Award
Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professor (LEAP) Scholar, UIUC LAS
Dreyfus Machine Learning in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Award
ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Award
3M Nontenured Faculty Award
Additional Campus Affiliations
Group Leader, Beckman Institute - AI for Materials
Affiliate faculty member, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Affiliate faculty member, Materials Science and Engineering