Thomas Allen is one of a few outstanding computational science PhD students nationwide selected to receive a 2015-2016 Blue Waters Fellowship. The fellowship provides financial support as well as an allocation of up to 50,000 node-hours on the powerful Blue Waters petascale computing system. Preference is given to applicants engaged in multidisciplinary research projects.

Allen is in Nancy Makri's research group. The research sponsored by the Blue Waters Graduate Fellowship will focus on the application of rigorous and accurate path integral methods developed by the Makri group to the simulation and analysis of proton transfer reactions in the condensed phase. Current work focuses on the dynamics of phenol-amine proton transfer in methyl chloride, in atomistic detail. Future work will be oriented toward employing these techniques in larger and more complex systems, including enzymatic active sites.