Alexei Kananenka

Alexei Kananenka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Delaware, part of the College of Arts & Sciences. He joined UD in 2020 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago (2017-2019) following his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and an M.Sc. from the University of Western Ontario.

His research focuses on computational spectroscopy of condensed-phase systems, polariton dynamics in light-matter hybrids, and machine learning applications to quantum dissipative systems. Current projects include studying vibrational spectroscopy of biomolecules, energy transfer in photosynthetic complexes, and neural network models for long-time quantum dynamics.

Dr. Kananenka has secured a NIH R21 grant (2024) and collaborates widely across computational chemistry and biophysics. His group currently advises graduate students Skyler Lindsey and Dayanara Yanez, with recent advisee Rashed graduating with an M.Sc. in 2024.

Recent work includes groundbreaking studies on K+ ion channels' selectivity mechanisms, cavity-enhanced energy transfer in FMO complexes, and transformer-based models for quantum dynamics. His lab operates at the intersection of theoretical chemistry, machine learning, and ultrafast spectroscopy.