Prof. Head has been at University of Hawai'i Manoa for 23 years, coming here directly from his post doctoral position at University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, and his B.Sc. in London, England. He currently teaches one class per semester. Classes he teach include Theory of Chemical Bonding, Freshman Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, and Spectroscopy. He currently has three graduate students.
As a theoretical chemist, Prof. Head uses supercomputer power to understand what's happening in materials on the molecular level, using quantum mechanics theory. He is currently trying to understand the structures of Silicon nanoclusters using computer software packages such as Gaussian and GAMESS. He runs his codes on the Dell cluster, maintained by the ICS department. In the past, his students have run codes on SQUALL, the MHPCC supercomputer that was replaced by Hurricane late last year, and on Tempest, the MHPCC supercomputer that morphed into Hurricane late last year. As he is predicting structures, the calculations require lots of cycles, but not a lot of storage, and the Dell cluster is currently meeting his needs. As for the future? "The resources need to keep growing with the demand," says Prof. Head, "As the problems get bigger, the computers will need to get bigger as well." Read more about his projects at http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/UH_Chem/faculty/head.html.
