Neepa Maitra

Neepa T. Maitra is a theoretical physicist and was a professor of physics at Hunter College of the City University of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She now works as a professor at Rutgers, in the field of theoretical chemical physics. She is most well known for her contributions to theoretical chemistry and chemical physics, especially in the development of accurate functionals in time-dependent density functional theory and correlated electron-ion dynamics.

Early life and education
Maitra was born in September 1972, raised in New Zealand, and completed her bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Otago. She went on to get her Ph.D. in physics at Harvard University in the lab of Eric "Rick" Heller and postdoctoral at the University of California, Berkeley, and Rutgers University. Maitra is currently in the Department of Physics at Rutgers University-Newark.

Research projects and publications
Time-dependent density functional theory is an area to investigate the properties of various functionals and has a wide range of implications and applications.



Exact factorization approach is a way to explore numerical stability of equations, and improve understanding of exact potentials and equations.



Polaritonic chemistry is a field that arose from manipulating molecules. Maitra's group has been investigating these phenomena through an extension of the exact factorization approach.



Presentations
At the CECAM workshop on Triggering Out-of-Equilibrium Dynamics in Molecular Systems in Lausanne, Switzerland in March 2023, Maitra participated and gave an invited talk remotely. In August 2023, Maitra presented remotely at the Progress in Non-Equilibrium Green’s Function Workshop in Orebro, Sweden discussing recent work on perspectives on TDDFT beyond linear response.

Awards
Maitra received an NSF Career Award for her work in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry.

Maitra received an NSF Award for her work on Molecules in Classical and Quantized Fields.