Judith Harrison

Judith A. Harrison is an American physical chemist and tribologist who is known for pioneering numerical methods that incorporate chemical reactions into modeling studies. She is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Education Harrison attended the University of New Hampshire, and completed a Ph.D in computational quantum chemistry on gas-phase reaction dynamics under the supervision of H.R. Mayne in 1989.

Career After a yearlong post-doctoral appointment at Duke University, Harrison joined the research group of Carter White and Richard Colton at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as an American Society of Engineering Education postdoctoral associate She joined the chemistry department at the United States Naval Academy as an assistant professor, and was subsequently promoted to the ranks of associate professor and full professor. She has also held visiting scientist appointments at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Harrison currently serves on the editorial board of Tribology Letters. She has held a variety of leadership, educational, and advisory roles in the AVS and STLE, and is the Vice-Chair for the 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Tribology.

Research and publications Harrison studies friction at the molecular level and runs simulations to unravel the molecular origins of friction and wear. She has published on topics that include Nanotribology, Molecular dynamics, Friction, At NRL she began working with D.W. Brenner, who had recently reported a formalism for a potential energy surface now known as the "Brenner Potential". The potential was initially formulated for hydrocarbons in order to model diamond film deposition, but soon proved to be applicable to other scientific problems. Utilizing this potential and with a focus on diamond surfaces, Harrison was the lead author reporting on a number of pioneering accomplishments with Brenner and co-workers at NRL while she was at the Naval Academy. These include the first use of molecular dynamics to study atomic-scale friction and adhesion between sliding solids, the first reported simulation of a tribochemistry, and the first report of frictional energy dissipation with the use of molecular dynamics.

Her two most cited works have been cited over 3400 times each:

A reactive potential for hydrocarbons with intermolecular interactions SJ Stuart, AB Tutein, JA Harrison, The Journal of Chemical Physics, 2000

Honors and awards 2000 Naval Academy's Research Excellence Award 2000, 2018 Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award 2014 Navy Superior Civilian Service Award 2018 Fellow, Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers 2020 Kinnear endowed Fellow of Chemistry