BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Schnupf went to trade school in Germany to become a Chemischer Technischer Assistant (wet chemist) before he received his MS (Diplom Chemiker) in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Siegen (Germany), under the direction of Prof. Dr. Ralph Jaquet, focusing on scattering theory. After graduating from the University of Siegen, he moved to Emory University in Atlanta, where he earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Michael Heaven and Prof. Keiji Morokuma. During his graduate studies, he shifted his focus from Laser-Induced Spectroscopy of open-shell systems to a more computational approach simulating the electronic structure of van der Waals open-shell systems. After his graduate studies, Dr. Schnupf spent some time as a postdoc at Sandia National Labs in Livermore, California, studying gas phase kinetics utilizing one of the early prototype Linux clusters in the country. After his postdoc, Dr. Schnupf taught for several years at Troy University before stopping at Bradley University in 2003-2005 as a visiting assistant professor. After his first stay at Bradley, Dr. Schnupf continued his professional development, working for several years as a research chemist at the USDA’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) in Peoria, IL, investigating the structural behavior of amylose/cellulosic fragments in solution using density functional theory. After his stay at the USDA, he spent three years at Cornell University at the Department of Food Science, working with Prof. John Brady on a multitude of projects, including the simulation of carbohydrates interacting with each other and with proteins, either as substrates for enzymes, ligands for carbohydrate-binding proteins like lectins, or in general non-specific interactions, and the hydration of planar hydrophobic species. In 2014, Dr. Schnupf returned to Bradley as a chemistry lecturer and joined the Department in 2016 as a new faculty member. During his thirty-plus year-long career, Dr. Schnupf has co-authored more than fifty peer-reviewed articles published in high-impact chemical physics journals. In addition, he has presented his research findings at more than thirty national and international conferences.