Mathew D. Halls, Vice President of Materials Science, is responsible for leading the materials science program at Schrödinger. who are his past associates and where has he lectured as a guest speaker.
Executive summary
Mathew D. Halls leads Schrödinger’s materials science program and has a track record spanning industry, academia, and national fellowships; his past professional associates include companies (Materials Design, Accelrys/BIOVIA, Zyvex, MSI), doctoral mentor Berny Schlegel, and co‑authors on atomistic modeling work (e.g., Benjamin J. Coscia), while his speaking engagements include professional society presentations and workshops listed on conference and society sites. These claims are drawn from institutional profiles, conference listings, and professional directories; where sources are silent about specific collaborator lists or exhaustive speaking histories, that absence is noted below [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Past employers and immediate professional associates — corporate and lab affiliations
Halls’s career before and around his time at Schrödinger is anchored in a sequence of industry and research positions: he worked as a senior scientist and account manager at Materials Design, Inc. and at Accelrys, Inc. (now Biovia) prior to joining Schrödinger in 2012, according to Columbia’s Center for Computational Electrochemistry and supporting profiles [1] [2]. Corporate‑directory and recruiting profiles add roles at Zyvex — where he is reported to have been Manager of the Scientific Simulation and Modeling Group — and positions at MSI (Materials Science, Inc.) on his résumé trail [3]. These employer ties imply recurring professional associations with the scientific teams and client communities at those companies, though the public sources do not enumerate individual colleagues at each employer beyond institutional affiliation [1] [3].
2. Academic genealogy and research co‑authors — doctoral mentor and collaborators
Halls earned a PhD in quantum chemistry under Professor Berny Schlegel at Wayne State University in 2001, a formal academic association that places Schlegel as Halls’s doctoral advisor [2]. His Google Scholar and ResearchGate footprints show a broad set of collaborators in materials simulation and quantum chemistry fields; ResearchGate listings attach his name to collaborative work such as atomistic hair‑fiber modeling with co‑authors including Benjamin J. Coscia, indicating active co‑authorship networks in computational materials and polymer research [5] [4]. Academic genealogy databases and profile aggregators reference an E.R. Davidson Fellowship in theoretical chemistry earlier in his career, a credential that denotes mentorship and cohort networks in theoretical chemistry circles, though the specific fellowship mentors are not detailed in the cited sources [1] [6].
3. Where he has lectured or presented — conferences, workshops, and society appearances
Public event listings and speaker pages show Halls has presented at professional conferences and ACS‑affiliated sessions; an ACS/Digitell speaker profile and conference speaker pages list him among presenters, while conference program archives and digitized speaker records confirm appearances and invited talks in materials simulation and computational chemistry forums [7] [2]. Company and conference bios emphasize that he has led workshops and talks for industry audiences and academic groups around computational materials and simulation topics, but the available sources do not provide a comprehensive calendar of institutions, lecture titles, or a full roster of guest‑lecturer locations [2] [7]. Where event records exist they point to engagements at professional society meetings and specialized workshops rather than named university course appointments in the public record [2] [7].
4. What the sources don’t say, and why that matters
Public profiles and corporate pages reliably establish employers, doctoral mentorship, fellowship honors, and selected speaking appearances, yet they do not supply an exhaustive list of all past collaborators, lab members, or every guest lecture venue; comprehensive collaborator rosters would require publication‑level co‑author analysis or institutional CV access that these sources don’t publish [5] [1] [2]. Directory and recruiting pages (Crunchbase, The Org, ZoomInfo) corroborate roles but can contain dated or truncated entries, so while they support the narrative of Halls’s industry trajectory, they are not substitutes for a full academic CV or conference program archive [8] [9] [3]. Alternative viewpoints are therefore limited to interpreting corporate bios versus peer‑reviewed publication records: corporate bios highlight leadership and client‑facing roles [1] [9], whereas publication records and co‑author lists (ResearchGate, Google Scholar) illuminate his scientific collaborators and subject‑matter networks [5] [4].