Dr. James L. Skinner

James L. Skinner received his Bachelor of Arts (Chemistry and Physics) from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Master of Arts (Physics) and Ph.D. (Chemical Physics) from Harvard University. He was then an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1981, where he was promoted to Professor in 1986. He then moved to the University of Wisconsin as the Director of the Theoretical Chemistry Institute and Joseph O. Hirschfelder Professor of Chemistry in 1990. In 2017 he joined the faculty of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, where he was the Crown Family Professor, Deputy Dean for Faculty Affairs, and Director of the Water Research Initiative. In 2020 he retired from the University of Chicago, and returned to the University of Wisconsin, where he is the Joseph O. and Elizabeth S. Hirschfelder Professor Emeritus. A few of his many fellowships, honors, and awards include a Guggenheim fellowship (1993), the University of Wisconsin Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2003), membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the American Chemical Society Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics (2012), and membership in the National Academy of Sciences (2012). He was also Associate and Deputy Editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics from 2009-19, and the President of the Telluride Science Research Center in 2018. Skinner has over 230 publications in refereed journals and has presented over 360 invited lectures at conferences, universities, and research laboratories. Theoretical spectroscopy of condensed phases, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and structure, dynamics, and thermodynamics of liquid and solid water are among his many research interests.