The consortium, known as the Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate computational chemistRY (MERCURY) was founded in 2001 with the goal of establishing research collaboration among seven computational chemistry faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). The consortium members share NSF-funded computational facilities and meet at an annual MERCURY conference to network and present their research. You can read more about the consortium in the publications below.
If you are interested in joining the consortium, come to one of our meetings (typically held in July) and contact one of the members of our executive committee (K. Aurelia Ball, Robert Berger, Petia Bobadova, Juan Duchimaza Heredia, Maria A Gomez, Ashley Ringer McDonald, Bill Miller III, Carol Parish, George Shields, Dom Sirianni, Patricia Soto Becerra). Former undergraduate research students from a MERCURY member’s laboratory have an open invitation to join when they secure their first tenure track position at a primarily undergraduate institution.
- Shields, G. C., Twenty years of exceptional success: The molecular education and research consortium in undergraduate computational chemistry ( MERCURY ). International Journal of Quantum Chemistry 2020, 120 (20), e26274. DOI: 10.1002/qua.26274
- McDonald, A. R.; Nash, J. A.; Nerenberg, P. S.; Ball, K. A.; Sode, O.; Foley, J. J.; Windus, T. L.; Crawford, T. D. Building Capacity for Undergraduate Education and Training in Computational Molecular Science: A Collaboration between the MERCURY Consortium and the Molecular Sciences Software Institute. Int J Quantum Chem 2020, 120 (20). https://doi.org/10.1002/qua.26359.
- Anderson, K., Arrandondo, S., Ball, A., Bruce, C., Gomez, M., He, K., Hendrickson, H., Madison, L, McDonald, A., Nagan, M., Scott, C., Soto, P., Tomlinson, A., Varner, M., Parish, C., “The impacts of Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate Computational Chemistry (MERCURY) on the Careers of Women in Computational Chemistry.” J. Chem. Inf. Model. 2022 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.2c00566