UTEP Welcomes Dr. Pederson

Dr. Mark Pederson

Chair and Professor, Department of Physics

Dr. Pederson joins UTEP from the Department of Energy (DOE), with a research background in chemical physics, condensed-matter physics, and computational physics. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison – where he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumni in the Department of Physics – and bachelors’s degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Pederson was inspired to enter the field of physics while attending high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Mr. Harlan Sandholm, his physics teacher and high school athletic director, reminded him and his classmates of a timeless truth: regardless of the era, out-of-the-box innovations by physicists have always been and will always be needed to mitigate societal problems.

Prior to joining UTEP, Dr. Pederson spent his career performing, managing, and funding research at the interface of physics and chemistry for the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., the National Science Foundation, and most recently for the DOE. Since the start of his career, Dr. Pederson’s focus has continuously concentrated on next-generation computing paradigms for quantum mechanics. His most recent publication focused on how non-destructive magnetic spectroscopy techniques could be used to understand reaction mechanisms in a molecule that bears a striking similarity to a complex in Mother Nature’s photosystem II (PSII), which uses sunlight to convert water to oxygen and hydrogen for energy.

During his tenure as a government employee, Dr. Pederson was recognized by the NRL for his outstanding performance for 19 consecutive years, beginning in 1989. In 2004, he received the Sigma Xi Edison Pure Science Award from the NRL, one of the highest accolades in human-centered design and innovation. In 2008, Dr. Pederson started building a ten-year, $30 million program in computational and theoretical chemistry for the DOE. The DOE recognized him for his program-manager-level advice on the Materials Genome Initiative, an interagency program with the NSF and NIST, intended to shorten the time required to transition new materials from discovery to deployment. Dr. Pederson is a member of the American Chemical Society, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He has published over 200 papers, including one of the most highly cited papers in physics and chemistry, and co-authored with numerous researchers from nearly 30 different countries. In 2014, Dr. Pederson invented a new form of density-functional theory that he named the "Fermi-L?wdin-Orbital Self-Interaction Correction". This method is now being further developed by a large team of scientists in the United States and Germany, alongside researchers at UTEP, one of the four primary hubs for the project.

Dr. Pederson is the primary author of the Naval Research Laboratory Molecular Orbital Library (NRLMOL), a code that is used to benchmark several versions of the density functional theory for molecules. It is the first computational code capable of calculating infrared and Raman spectra of molecules within density functional theory, and the first code to calculate several types of magnetic responses of molecules to applied magnetic fields. In 2000, NRLMOL was the first library to be re-written in a manner that demonstrated a means for performing automatic load-balanced massive parallelization in the field of electronic structure.

His proudest long-term achievement is his individual grass-roots attention to cultural and gender diversity in science, and in affirming by example that equal access and inclusion leads to excellence. In his new role as Chair of the Physics Department at UTEP, Dr. Pederson is committed to combining his research interests with the strategies he presented during his interview process entitled, "How Physicists can Prepare Students to Create a Sustainable Future". His approach for achieving this includes increasing outreach to national labs and industry, and encouraging how teaching experimental, theoretical, and computational physics can be modified to use day-to-day sustainable approaches for the development of new solutions that better address the needs of our society. Dr. Pederson firmly believes that the multicultural community of El Paso will continue to inspire the region to emerge as the international leader in sustainable and cooperative living.

Dr. Pederson shares that in addition to his scholarly work, one of his personal sustainability ventures while in Washington, D.C., was the early installation of a 5KW solar panel on his home. In addition to research challenges, Dr. Pederson enjoys travel, the outdoors, endurance sports, and adventure. He enjoys running and biking, and has completed four marathons. He has swam across the Chesapeake Bay, camped in the frozen Minnesota Boundary waters in the middle of the winter, and bicycled from Munich to Budapest. A yet unmet goal of his is to walk the Appalachian Trail, and bike from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh, on a converted railroad bike path. Dr. Pederson’s wife, Dr. Yung Min Kim, is the assistant head of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. where their daughter, Annika, is attending her final year of high school. Their son, Erik, is enjoying his studies as a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University where he also plays football.