Laura Gagliardi

Gagliardi earned her Master of Science degree in chemistry at the University of Bologna in 1992 for which she was awarded 'Toso Montanari' for the student with the highest-mark graduation in chemistry. She earned her PhD at the same university in 1997. She was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge from 1998 to 1999.

Gagliardi became an assistant professor at the University of Palermo in 2002. In 2005, she became associate professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and in 2009 she joined the University of Minnesota as a professor of chemistry. She was director of the Nanoporous Materials Genome Center from 2012 to 2014 and has been director of the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center since 2014. She was the director of the Chemical Theory Center from 2011 to 2020. She was appointed as Distinguished McKnight University Professor in 2014[1] and awarded a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in 2018.[2] In 2020, she joined the University of Chicago as the Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor.[3] She is the director of the Chicago Center for Theoretical Chemistry.

Her research focuses on the development of electronic structure methods and their use for understanding complex chemical systems.[4] These systems have practical applications in terms of sustainability and nuclear waste management. Her work with theoretical chemistry also showed that a certain form of uranium forms quintuple bonds, which changed the way chemists view interactions between metal atoms.

She has served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation (2016-present) and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the following journals: Journal of Catalysis (2018-present), Chemical Reviews (2015-present), ACS Central Science (2014-present), The Journal of the American Chemical Society (2013-2018), Inorganic Chemistry (2014-2016), Theoretical Chemistry Accounts (2009-present), Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation (2012-2016), and the Journal of Physical Chemistry (2011-2016).

• 2004: Annual Award of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences
• 2016: Fellow of American Physical Society[5]
• 2016: Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry[6]
• 2016: Bourke Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry
• 2016: Isaiah Shavitt Lectureship Award, Technion
• 2017: Member of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists[7]
• 2018: Humboldt Research Award[8]
• 2018: Member of the Academia Europaea[1]
• 2019: Award in Theoretical Chemistry from the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society[9]
• 2019: Member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science[10]
• 2020: Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society[11]
• 2020: Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[12]

Gagliardi is married to fellow University of Minnesota chemistry professor and vice president for research Christopher J. Cramer; the couple has three children from a prior marriage.[13]

The Gagliardi Research Group