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 and leader of the AI for Materials Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. 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.
Research Interests
Coarse-graining, electronic processes, machine learning, soft materials
Research Description
The Jackson Lab 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 models, conjugated materials theory, and polymer design. There is a strong emphasis on method developments that enable accelerated electronic predictions in disordered systems.
Active and/or recent research efforts in the group include:
- 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.
- Language models for decoding polymer sequences.
- Modeling polymer reactivity ratios for copolymerization.
Awards and Honors
2025 Cottrell Scholar Award
2024 Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry Award
2024 AIChE COMSEF Young Investigator Award
2024 Center for Advanced Study Fellow, UIUC
2024 School of Chemical Sciences Faculty Teaching Award, UIUC
2024 ACS OpenEye/Cadence Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry
2023 Early Career Board, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
2023 Scialog Fellow for Automating Chemical Laboratories
2023 Department of Energy Early Career Program Award
2023 Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors Scholar, UIUC
2022 Selected as a Rising Star, Applied Physics Letters
2022 Selected as a Rising Star, Chemistry of Materials "Up-and-Coming Series"
2022 Selected as an Emerging Investigator, Molecular Systems Design & Engineering
2022 Selected as an Emerging Investigator, Journal of Chemical Physics
2021 Dreyfus Machine Learning in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Award
2021 ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator Award
2021 3M Nontenured Faculty Award
2019 ACS PHYS Young Investigator Award
2019 MRS Postdoctoral Award
2019 Maria Lastra Excellence in Mentoring Award, University of Chicago
2016 Maria Goeppert Mayer Named Fellowship, Argonne National Laboratory
2015 Presidential Fellowship, Northwestern University
2015 MRS Graduate Student Silver Award
2013 Lambert Award for Excellence in Graduate Research, Northwestern University
2012 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
2011 High Honors, Phi Beta Kappa, Karl Van Dyke Prize, Wesleyan University
Additional Campus Affiliations
Group Leader, Beckman Institute - AI for Materials
Affiliate faculty member, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Affiliate faculty member, Materials Science and Engineering