Dr. Daniel Dumett Torres of Professor Prashant Jain’s laboratory is the winner of the 2019 Physical Chemistry Dissertation Award, given to the best Ph.D. thesis in the area of physical chemistry each year in the Department of Chemistry. Harnessing Blue Waters and XSEDE clusters, Dr. Dumett Torres computationally elucidated novel phases of matter such as superionic nanocrystals and topological insulators, which are synthesized and experimentally studied in Professor Jain's group. These results were published in top journals such as Nature Communications and Chemistry of Materials. Dr. Dumett Torres was also a winner of the Dorothy M. and Earl S. Hoffman Travel Grant from the American Vacuum Society in 2017 and a XSEDE scholarship.