MolSSI Software Scientist: Dr. Jing Chen

jchenmol@vt.edu

Dr. Jing Chen earned her B.S in Textile Engineering at Donghua University in Shanghai, China back in 2010. In 2015, she was awarded her Ph.D. in Fiber and Polymer Science at North Carolina State University while working with Dr. Melissa Pasquinelli on Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the Omniphobic Properties of Polymer Surfaces.  She then discovered a passion for programming and software engineering in 2018, leading her to the University of Texas (Dallas) to pursue a master’s degree in computer science.  Thus, Dr. Chen brings this quite rare combination of skills to the MolSSI, working in areas that span the two fields.

With her cross-disciplinary background, Jing joined the MolSSI during the final semester of her MS studies as a half-time Software Scientist; she will assume her full-time role as Software Scientist after her graduation in May 2021. Jing’s expertise in molecular dynamics simulations includes packages like LAMMPS, Materials Studio, and VMD. Her software engineer experience is mostly related to web application development using React, JavaScript, and Python.

In her spare time (what little there is of it!), Jing enjoys cooking and playing with her three fur babies, a cat and two dogs. She also has found that experimenting with different recipes and tasting the results afterward are both rewarding and a useful stress-reliever!