Anastassia Alexandrova

Anastassia N. Alexandrova is the Charles W. Clifford Jr. Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she joined the faculty in 2010 in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the California NanoSystems Institute. She earned her Ph.D. in Theoretical Physical Chemistry from Utah State University in 2005 and her B.S./M.S. degree with highest honors from Saratov State University, Russia, in 2000. Prior to her faculty position, Alexandrova was a Postdoctoral Associate and American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. She briefly worked as a researcher at the Vernadskii Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences after her undergraduate studies.

The Alexandrova research group specializes in computational and theoretical design of functional materials, including heterogeneous catalysts, artificial metalloenzymes, alloys, quantum materials, and qubits. Employing multi-scale modeling that integrates quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, her team examines electronic structure, chemical bonding, and dynamic interfaces under realistic operational conditions. Key areas encompass heterogeneous catalysis on dynamic surfaces, electric fields in enzymes, quantum information science, and topological quantum materials. With over 13,500 citations on Google Scholar, her influential publications include "Electric fields imbue enzyme reactivity by aligning active site geometries" (PNAS, 2024), "CO₂ Hydrogenation to Formate and Formic Acid by Bimetallic Palladium-Copper Hydride Clusters" (JACS, 2020), and highly cited works on catalyst dynamics such as those recognized in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Alexandrova's achievements are honored with awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2013), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2011), Fulbright Fellowship (2016), ACS Women Chemists Committee Rising Star Award (2016), ACS Physical Chemistry Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry (2020), Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award (2021), UCLA Undergraduate Research Mentorship Award (2018), UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award (2019), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2024), Brown Investigator Award (2023), Gold Shield Faculty Prize (2023), Quantum Bio-Inorganic Chemistry Prize (2024), and Utah State University Distinguished Alumni Award (2026). She delivered the 2025 Trustees' Council of Penn Women Lecture in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professional Email: ana@chem.ucla.edu