Rate My Professor Woodrow Wilson

Dr. Woodrow Wilson serves as Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of Alabama's Lee J. Styslinger Jr. College of Engineering. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering with a Chemical Engineering concentration from Mississippi State University in 2025, M.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2022, and B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2020 from the same university. His office is located at 3426 Science and Engineering Complex.

Dr. Wilson's research employs molecular simulations to investigate atomic-scale phenomena in heterogeneous catalysis. He trains machine learning models to predict atomic interactions based on quantum mechanics data. He also uses molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations to study interfaces between catalyst surfaces, solvents, and reactants. In engineering education, his interests include chemical engineering applications in unit operations laboratories, using molecular simulations to explain thermodynamic concepts, and chemical process optimization in senior design projects. Key publications include Wilson, W. N., Lane, J. M., Saha, C., Severin, S., Bharadwaj, V. S., Rai, N., “Nature of molybdenum carbide surfaces for catalytic hydrogen dissociation using machine-learned potentials: an ensemble-averaged perspective,” Catalysis Science & Technology 15, 1492-1505 (2025); and Wilson, W. N., Whittington, J., Rai, N., “Solvent Structure and Dynamics over Brønsted Acid MWW Zeolite Nanosheets,” The Journal of Chemical Physics 160(22), 224703 (2024). His work has been presented at North American Catalysis Society Meetings and American Chemical Society Conferences.