Announcing Professor Edward F. Valeev, the New Deputy Editor of The Journal of Physical Chemistry A

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS Publications) is pleased to announce that Professor Edward F. Valeev (Virginia Tech) has been appointed as Deputy Editor of The Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

The Journal of Physical Chemistry, led by Editor-in-Chief Joan-Emma Shea (UC Santa Barbara) is divided by topic area into The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, and The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, each of which are led by a Deputy Editor.

The Journal of Physical Chemistry A publishes high-quality research featuring influential experimental, theoretical, and computational studies in the physical chemistry of molecules, ions, clusters, and aerosols. In addition, the journal publishes manuscripts describing new tools and methods that advance the physical chemistry community.

Prof. Valeev officially assumed the role of Deputy Editor in February 2026, succeeding Daniel Crawford, who led the journal from 2021–2026.

"This is a great opportunity to help build on the 130-year-old legacy of top-notch science in this Journal,” said Valeev. “The Journal of Physical Chemistry is one of the most respected journals in the ACS portfolio, and I will work to strengthen the profile of the journal, not only in my areas of specialty (theory and computation) but in all traditional and new areas of physical chemistry."

Prof. Valeev is a professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech, where his primary fields of research include energy, physical chemistry, theory, and computation. He is the recipient of numerous accolades including the Dirac Medal from the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists, the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences (IAQMS) Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the NSF CAREER Award.

"The goal of our research is to develop electronic structure methods that can predict—rather than rationalize—properties of molecules and materials,” Valeev explained. “This requires methods that involve a systematically improvable treatment of electron correlations beyond the mean-field picture employed by modern density functional approximations. This is an exciting area; there have been recent breakthroughs that have radically extended the reach of predictive methods, such as the coupled-cluster method, with respect to system size (hundreds to thousands of atoms) and accuracy, and new ideas emerge constantly. Our current focus is on making such methods useful for chemists and materials scientists as the mainstream density functional methods, by being able to not only provide energies, but also structure, spectra, and other properties.”