George L. Barnes

My Siena Experience

My Teaching Philosophy

Learning and education have always been a part of my life.  I grew up in a family of educators, and my life long journey of learning started well before formal education.  I have observed many different teaching styles and have adopted practices from various sources to become an effective teacher.  On the whole, I design my courses to encourage reasoning.  The numerical answer on the last line of a problem is not as important as presenting the thought process that went into the solution.  I encourage my students to develop their physical intuition by frequently adding in “reality checks” that take them out of the mindset of following a prescription.  I want them to do more than follow steps; I want them to think critically about science.  I also strongly believe that undergraduate research greatly benefits education, and I try to incorporate at least brief glimpses of cutting-edge research into my courses. I thoroughly enjoy the close interactions that I have with students at Siena both in the classroom and in research.  

My Favorite Courses to Teach

Chemistry 110/120: General Chemistry I and II
Chemistry 310: Thermodynamics and Kinetics
Chemistry 315: Physical Chemistry Lab
Chemistry 320: Quantum Mechanics and Spectroscopy
Chemistry 499: Independent Study (Research) 

My Professional Experience

Current Research

I am very interested in chemical dynamics.  In particular, my group focuses on high-energy reaction dynamics that takes place within tandem mass spectrometry.  My group performs both ab initio calculations and direct dynamics simulations to decipher complex reaction mechanisms.  Our work has highlighted the importance of proton mobility in these reactions and has been featured on multiple journal covers.  For more information, visit my research webpage.

Articles & Book Reviews

• Energy and Temperature Dependent Dissoci- ation of the Na+(benzene)1,2 clusters: Importance of Anharmonicity
  Journal of Chemical Physics
  2015
• The Effect of Protonaton Site and Conformation on Surface-Induced Dissociation in a Small, Lysine Containing Peptide
  Chemical Physics Letters
  2015
• The Role of Proton Transfer in Surface-induced Dissociation
  Journal of Physical Chemistry C
  2014
• The VENUS/NWChem software package. Tight coupling between chemical dynamics simulations and electronic structure theory
  Computer Physics Communications, vol. 185
  2014
• Complex Formation during SID and Its Effect on Proton Mobility
  Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, vol. 4
  2013
• Surface Deposition Resulting from Collisions between Diglycine and Chemically Modified Alkylthiolate Self-Assembled Monolayer Surfaces
  Journal of Physical Chemistry C, vol. 117
  2013
• Time Dependent Dynamics of a Coupled Quantum Oscillator System in a Small Thermal Environment
  Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 139
  2013
• Visualizing the Zero Order Basis of the Spectroscopic Hamiltonian
  Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 136
  2012
• Detailed Analysis of Polyad-Breaking Spectroscopic Hamiltonians for Multiple Minima with Above Barrier Motion: Isomerization in HO₂
  Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 134
  2011
• Effective Hamiltonian for Femtosecond Vibrational Dynamics
  Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 135
  2011
• Fragmentation and Reactivity in Collisions of Protonated Diglycine with Chemically Modified Perfluorinated Alkylthiolate-Self-Assembled Monolayer Surfaces
  Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 134
  2011
• Efficient Resource Matching in Heterogeneous Grid Using Resource Vector
  International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology
  2010
• Model Non-equilbrium Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Heat Transfer from a Hot Gold Surface to an Alkylthiol Self-Assembled Monolayer
  Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, vol. 12
  2010
• Energy Transfer, Unfolding, and Fragmentation Dynamics in Collisions of N-Protonated Octaglycine with a H-SAM
  Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 131
  2009
• NH₄⁺ + CH₄ gas phase collisions as a possible analogue to protonated peptide/surface induced dissociation
  Journal of Physical Chemistry A, vol. 113
  2009
• Transition State Analysis: Bent out of shape
  Nature Chemistry, vol. 1
  2009
• An equilibrium focused approach to calculating the Raman spectrum of the symmetric OH stretch in formic acid dimer
  Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, vol. 249
  2008
• Elucidating energy disposal pathways following excitation of the symmetric OH stretching band in formic acid dimer
  Chemical Physics Letters, vol. 460
  2008
• Symmetric double proton tunneling in formic acid dimer: A diabatic basis approach
  Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol. 112
  2008
• The effects of asymmetric motions on the tunneling splittings in formic acid dimer
  Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 129
  2008
• The effects of asymmetric motions on the tunneling splittings in formic acid dimer
  Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 129
  2008
• Ion imaging studies of product rotational alignment in collisions of NO (X²Π_1/2, j=0.5) with Ar
  Chemical Physics, vol. 301
  2004
• Recombination and Reaction Dynamics Following Photodissociation of CH₃OCl in Solution
  Journal of Physical Chemistry A, vol. 108
  2004
• Direct measurement of the preferred sense of NO rotation after collision with argon
  Science, vol. 293
  2001

Presentations

• Post-Collision Dynamics of Hyperthermal Peptide + Surface Collision Systems
  2015
  Mesilla Chemistry Workshop on Isolated Biomolecules and Biomolecular Interactions, Mesilla, New Mexico
• An Examination of SID for Different Protonation States and Conformations of GGKG-H+
  2014
  13th Annual MERCURY Conference on Undergraduate Computational Chemistry, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
• An Examination of SID for Different Protonation States and Conformations of GGKG-H+
  2014
  Siena College Summer Research Symposium, Loudonville, New York
• Fragmentation and Ring-Opening during Collisions between Cyclic GGKG-H+ and a Perfluo- rinated Self-Assembled Monolayer
  2014
  13th Annual MERCURY Conference on Undergraduate Computational Chemistry, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
• Fragmentation and Ring-Opening during Collisions between Cyclic GGKG-H+ and a Perfluo- rinated Self-Assembled Monolayer
  2014
  Siena College Summer Research Symposium, Loudonville, New York
• Post-Collision Dynamics and Reactivity of Hyperthermal Peptide + Surface Collision Systems
  2014
  Union College Chemistry Department Seminar, Schenectady, New York
• The Role of Proton Mobility in Peptide Fragmentation Dynamics and Complex Formation
  2014
  Eastern NY ACS Undergraduate Research Symposium, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
• Development of a Potential Energy Surface Suitable for Direct Dynamics Simulations of the Collisions between Benzene Radical Cation and a Self-Assembled Monolayer Surface
  2013
  Siena College Academic Celebration, Loudonville, New York
• Effects of Proton Transfer on Fragmentation Dynamics in Collisions of N-Protonated Octaglycine with an F-SAM Surface
  2013
  Siena College Academic Celebration, Loudonville, New York
• Surface Deposition Resulting from Collisions Between Diglycine and Chemically Modified Alkylthiolate Self-Assembled Monolayer Surfaces
  2013
  5th Annual Eastern New York ACS Undergraduate Research Symposium, Loudonville, New York
• The Role of Proton Mobility in Peptide Fragmentation Dynamics and Complex Formation
  2013
  12th MERCURY Conference on Computational Chemistry, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
• Fragmentation and Reactivity in Collisions of Protonated Diglycine with Chemically Modified F-SAM Surfaces
  2011
  Gaseous Ions Gordon Research Conference, Galveston, Texas
• Equilibrium Focused Approaches to Calculating Tunneling Splittings in Formic Acid Dimer
  2008
  55th Annual Western Spectroscopy Conference, Pacific Grove, California
• Semi classical modeling of preferred senses of product rotation resulting from rotationally inelastic atom-diatom scattering: Rotational vs. Translational phase interference effects
  2003
  50th Annual Western Spectroscopy Conference, Pacific Grove, California
• Monte Carlo classical trajectory modeling of angular momentum alignment and orientation in rotationally inelastic atom-diatom collisions: attractive and repulsive effects in NE and Ar-NO
  2002
  49th Annual Western Spectroscopy Conference, Pacific Grove, California
• Classical modeling of rotationally inelastic scattering involving both single and multiple encounter collisions
  2001
  48th Annual Western Spectroscopy Conference, Pacific Grove, California