Professor Szczesniak carries out basic research in the field of intermolecular interactions. Her research program includes the following themes: (i) the evaluation and analysis of potential energy surfaces in pairwise interactions, where the ultimate goal is to develop the transferable potential energy parameters for interactions between biological systems, (ii) the studies of many-body forces which are known to be crucial to the understanding of condensed-phase behavior and to the modeling of clusters, (iii) the studies of interactions involving excited-state molecules, and (iv) free radicals. The reactions involving the last two classes of species are represented by multiple potential energy surfaces which are complex energy landscapes. The entrance and exit valleys of these surfaces are governed by the long-range forces which act between the reagents before they undergo a chemical transformation. These forces are known to profoundly affect the probability of reactive encounters. The state-of-the-art computational methodology is employed in these studies. These efforts have led to the fundamental understanding of these interactions and to the development of several potential energy surfaces of unprecedented accuracy. Szczesniak's group has published over 100 papers in this field and has received continuous external funding.
