| Eric R. Bittner | |
| Birth Date: | 23 September 1965 |
| Birth Place: | Fort Wayne Indiana |
| Citizenship: | US |
| Nationality: | American |
| Fields: | Theoretical Chemistry and Physics |
| Alma Mater: | Valparaiso University University of Chicago |
| Doctoral Advisor: | John C. Light |
| Academic Advisors: | Peter Rossky, Hans C. Andersen |
| Known For: | Quantum dynamics, chemical physics |
| Awards: | Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, Leverhulme Professor, Ulam Scholar |
Eric R. Bittner is a theoretical chemist, physicist, and distinguished professor of chemical physics at the University of Houston.
Bittner obtained his B.S. in chemistry and in physics from Valparaiso University in 1988. From 1988 to 1994 he worked with John C. Light at the University of Chicago and obtained his Ph.D. thesis in 1994 on Quantum Theories of Energy Exchange at the Gas-Surface Interface. Subsequently, he worked at the University of Texas at Austin until 1996 as postdoctoral fellow of the National Science Foundation, with Peter J. Rossky as his mentor. He was visiting scholar at Stanford University from 1995 to 1997, with Hans C. Andersen as his mentor.[1]
In 1997 he joined the University of Houston as an assistant professor of theoretical chemistry, where he became an associate professor of theoretical chemistry in 2003. In the summer of 2001, he worked as visiting faculty at the Center for Non-Linear Studies at Los Alamos National Lab and in 2023 he served as the Ulam Distinguished Scholar in the CNLS.[1] He is currently a professorin the UH Physics Department.
In 2009 Bittner became the John and Rebecca Moores Distinguished Professor of chemical physics at the University of Houston.[2] [3] [4] In 2013, he became the Hugh Roy and Lillian Cranz Cullen Professor of Physics.
He has worked at the University of Cambridge, the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and at Los Alamos National Lab[5] and has collaborated, among others, with Robert E. Wyatt.[1]
Eric Bittner is also an Eagle Scout.
His main research interests lie with the dynamics of molecules in their excited electronic states.
Bittner and his co-workers have investigated organic semiconductors, in particular, semiconductive polymers, the modulation and tuning of their electronic dynamics due to intramolecular vibrational motions of the polymers, and investigations into phonon modes.They have worked on energy transfer in DNA molecules using methods of molecular dynamics, time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) and analytical lattice models.They have developed a quantum hydrodynamics approach for computing the energies involved in quantum vibrations in small atomic clusters by combining the De Broglie–Bohm formulation of quantum mechanics and Bayesian sampling, using this approach also to study quantum aspects of the thermodynamics of small rare gas clusters in thermal regions close to the clusters' melting point. Furthermore, they used supersymmetry (SUSY) quantum mechanics for computing excitation energies of quantum systems using Monte Carlo calculations.
His APS Fellowship citation reads: “For developing theoretical and computational descriptions of quantum dynamics in molecular systems, especially for their use in understanding the migration of energy and charge in molecular electronic excited states.”
Bittner has received several grants and awards for his work:[1] [6] [7]
The John and Rebecca Moores professorship was awarded to him as recognition for "outstanding work in both research and teaching". In his nomination, special emphasis was placed on his seminal work on trajectory-base methods for performing quantum mechanical calculations.[11]