Biography

I was born and raised in Grand Forks North Dakota and earned my B.S. in chemistry from St. John’s University in Collegeville. In 1996 I received a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at North Dakota State University working under Dr. John Hershberger. After that I did about two and a half years of postdoctoral research with Dr. Richard Bersohn at Columbia University in the City of New York. Admittedly, moving from a state with about 600,000 people to an island with 3,000,000 was a bit of a culture shock but it was a very rewarding experience. In 1998 I took a position in the chemistry department at Illinois State University. After 18 years of mild winters in central Illinois it dawned on me that the one thing I really missed from my childhood was the -40 °F temperatures. So when BSU had an opening for a Physical Chemist I applied and was fortunate enough to be hired.

While my primary area of teaching is physical chemistry I have a taught courses in a wide range of sub disciplines, everything from general chemistry to atmospheric chemistry to graduate level kinetics and dynamics.

At ISU my research involved studying the gas phase photochemistry of the reaction of ground state oxygen atoms with a series of alkynes using a new and novel technique known as Cavity RingDown Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (CRD). At BSU I plan to concentrate on the computational side of my research where I will use high level ab initio programs to elucidate reaction mechanisms that are key in the atmospheric chemistry of Earth as well as other planets in the solar system.

In the few minutes a week I am not in the classroom/lab I can usually be found renovating my home, building computers and reading and/or binge watching science fiction.

Recent Work (Undergraduate Coauthors Underlined)

1. D. Buettner, B.J. Dilday, J.M. Standard, R.W. Quandt “The Reaction of O(³P) with Alkynes: A Dynamic and Computational Study” Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2016, In preparation.

2. J. McDonald and R.W. Quandt, “Ground State Surface Formation of Cl₂ in the Dissociation of CCl₄ and CHCl₃ and Comparisons with Br Species” Comput. Theor. Chem. 2014, 1037, 28-34.

M. Standard, R.J. Steidl, M.C. Beecher, R.W. Quandt, “A Multireference Configuration Interaction Study of Bromocarbenes” J. Phys. Chem. A, 2011, 115 (7), 1243–1249.

4. J. McDonald, A.D. Buettner, B. J. Petro, R.W. Quandt, “Reactive formation of dicarbon from the reactions of electronically excited radicals, CH(A²D) and CCl(A²D)” Chem. Phys. Lett. 2008, 464, 26-30.