In 1983, I completed my PhD in Mathematical Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden under the supervision of Bengt Lundqvist. The thesis project was a theoretical study of electron-hole pair damping of vibrations and surface lattice dynamics. My two year postdoctoral stint at Cornell University working with John Wilkins was funded by a fellowship from the Swedish Natural Science Research Council (NFR). This work involved theory of sticking in the quantum regime and structure-induced surface phonons.

In 1988, I took up a Lectureship back at Chalmers, where I expanded my research into the theory of physisorption and Eley-Rideal reaction dynamics . In 1997, I was awarded a six year NFR Senior Researcher Fellowship in "Condensed Matter theory", which also a supported a one-year long research stay at UC, Irvine working with Doug Mills and Wilson Ho. During my fellowship period, I pioneered the theory of single molecule chemistry and vibrational spectroscopy and microscopy by scanning probe techniques and later single charge control in collaboration with Gerhard Meyer at IBM Zurich. In 2001, I was promoted to Professor in Physics at Chalmers and in 2004 was a recipient of a Humboldt Senior Researcher Award.

In 2006, I moved to the Department of Chemistry and the Surface Science Research Centre at University of Liverpool as the Centenary Chair in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry. Research interests now also include theory of covalent assembly of molecular nanostructures and alternative routes for information storage and transfer on the atomic scale.

Last modified: 27 March, 2019 by Mats Persson