Dr. Brian J. Teppen

Research Interests:
Surface structures of environmentally relevant colloidal materials;
Adsorption mechanisms for gaseous and solution species interacting with solid phases in soils and sediments;
Implications for geochemical transport and fate
Anthropogenic modification of natural surfaces to optimize adsorbents for a given purpose.

Current Research Areas:

In building an understanding of molecular behavior within environmental systems, emerging technologies in condensed-phase molecular modeling are proving useful for a) constraining the interpretations of spectroscopic and diffraction data, b) stimulating new hypotheses and new approaches to experimentation, and c) performing truly predictive simulations of properties not amenable to experiment. Molecular modeling tools have traditionally been tailored toward proteins and other biochemical organic systems, but I have worked toward expanding their application to environmentally relevant systems such as soil minerals and aqueous species at colloid-solution interfaces. In the 1990s, my research focused on the development, validation, and application of molecular dynamics/Monte Carlo models for aqueous solutions, chemical contaminants, and clay mineral surfaces that often control adsorption and chemical speciation in soils, sediments, and groundwaters. I was the focal point of a diverse team that employed high-quality quantum mechanical calculations on small mineral fragments in order to help create a molecular mechanics force field for clay minerals. After substantial model validation, simulations of applied systems may be undertaken. My goals are to develop robust models for the most important environmental colloids and to use the models to accurately predict a greater variety of kinetic and thermodynamic information.

Since 1998 when I moved to Michigan State, I have had the good fortune to work on lots of applied simulations of clay-organic systems in collaboration with Steve Boyd, Hui Li, Tom Pinnavaia, Jim Tiedje, and others at Michigan State, plus collaborators like Cliff Johnston at Purdue and David Laird at the USDA-ARS Soil Tilth Laboratory. Together, we are working to understand the complex geochemical factors that control smectite clay interactions with small organic solutes.