As classes begin there is one professor who is not preparing a syllabus or marching off to meet a classroom of students. It is a long-standing tradition that professors are periodically given rest from teaching in order to focus on their research. Marmorino has begun his first research sabbatical and will resume teaching in the spring.
Marmorino's goals are two-fold. The first is to continue his current research into upper and lower bounds to properties of atomic and molecular systems. The main property of interest is the energy because differences in energy levels provide chemists with spectral lines or peaks with which to identify materials. The second goal is to expand his research from non-relativistic treatment to incorporate relativistic effects. This is very important because electrons, which essentially determine an atom's properties, move at speeds close to the speed of light. Furthermore, the spin of an electron is a natural consequence of relativistic theory.
