Michael Mara
Research Assistant Professor at Stanford University
United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael Mara is a Research Assistant Professor with 11 years of experience applying ultrafast optical and X-ray spectroscopies alongside quantum mechanical calculations to reveal electronic and structural dynamics of transition metal centers in proteins and biomimetic complexes. His work bridges fundamental bioinorganic chemistry and solar energy conversion, with a particular focus on how bond covalency in high-valent ferryl-oxo intermediates controls reactivity in heme enzymes. At Northwestern and during postdoctoral work at Stanford and UC Berkeley he has combined L-edge X-ray absorption, 1s2p RIXS, and XFEL-based ultrafast measurements to quantify frontier orbital character and map photophysical pathways. He is adept at translating complex spectroscopic data into mechanistic insight that informs catalyst and device design, and he frequently pairs experiments with targeted quantum calculations to test structure–function hypotheses. An underappreciated strength is his fluency across time scales—from femtosecond photophysics to static electronic structure—enabling experiments that directly connect transient states to catalytic outcomes.
11 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Chemistry, Chemistry at University of California, BerkeleyDoctor of Philosophy (PhD), Physical Chemistry, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Physical Chemistry at Northwestern UniversityPostdoc, Bioinorganic chemistry, Postdoc, Bioinorganic chemistry at Stanford University
Github Skills (58)
system-programming10
meta10
dsl10
low-level10
gpu-programming10
terra10
cuda10
opt10
collision9
gpu9
c999
lua9
distortion9
embedded9
physics8
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
Mx7f/RaytraceBenchmarking
Apr 2017 - May 2018
Contributions:12 commits, 1 PR, 6 pushes in 1 year
benchmarkraycasting
niessner/Opt
Nov 2015 - Dec 2019
Opt DSL
Contributions:5 releases, 493 commits, 10 PRs in 4 years 2 months
cudagpu-programminggpudslopt
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