who i am
I’m Lewis T. Nguyen. I’m a big brother, an amateur homecook, a former TV trivia nerd, an avid language learner, a physical chemist in the making, but above all, a human.
on my name: You can call me Lewis. My name in my native Vietnamese is Nguyễn Thiện Hải An, but in professional contexts I prefer to be referred to as Lewis. I have previously been called by several European variations of my name, including Louis, Luigi or Ludwig; for a good conversation starter, you are more than welcome to surprise me by calling me with a less common rendition I’ve not heard before (Ludovico/Ludo, Llywellyn, Alois, Lájos, etc.), or by various Sinitic renditions of my Vietnamese name. I go by he/him/his pronouns.
on my college life: I’m an undergraduate student double-majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics at Denison University, a small liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio, USA. I’m involved in the Denison Asian Student Union and served as their Senator to the student government for two years. I also served on the boards of TEDxDenisonU and Denison Chemical Society. Some of the most transformative experiences I had here include cold-calling alumni and parents for the Office of Annual Fund, deconstructing my own sense of identity in Introduction to International Studies, and rediscovering my love for mathematics in a positively unorthodox Multivariable Calculus class. As a researcher, I work with Dr. Timothy Luke Atallah in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry to study a less-known but promising class of organic-inorganic hybrid semiconductor materials called silver chalcogenolates. Our work has been presented at the American Chemical Society national meetings and our first paper is out on ChemRxiv as a preprint. I also spent the summer after my sophomore year working with Dr. Steven Kass in the Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (Minneapolis, MN) to study the kinetics and thermodynamics of gating in new molecular cage systems.
on my upbringing: I spent the first 18 years of my life in my hometown of Hanoi, Vietnam and finished secondary education there; I am a proud alumnus of Nguyễn Trường Tộ Secondary School in downtown Hanoi—named after the 19th-century Catholic advocate for the cause of modernization—and of HUS High School for Gifted Students, most known for producing Olympiad medalists but perhaps more remembered by alumni for the vibrant surrounding food scene, gaming hubs, and for perennially flooding during the rainy summers of Hanoi. I was particularly involved in High School Help Kit, a city-wide initiative to support students in transition from middle school to high school. I made several TV appearances on Vietnam’s Brainiest Kid (2017) and Đường lên đỉnh Olympia (2021) that you might have recognized me from. I am more than grateful to have met many incredible friends from these diverse engagements.
on my interests: Broadly, I’m interested in the concept of modeling—the human activity of distilling the indescribably complex reality into cognitively accessible structures called models, and using these models to envision new unknown or non-existent possibilities. As a scientist, I’m chiefly concerned with developing new methods and improving existing ones to theoretically/computationally describe chemical systems more accurately and with less cost. Besides sharpening our species’ understanding of the physical world, these discoveries bring social impact through guiding experimentation and reducing the environmental and financial cost of R&D, lowering the barrier to science for the Global South. My fascination with modeling has also manifested in my other interests. I am a worldbuilder/conlanger (a maker of fictional worlds and languages) with 9 years of experience. Some of my most extensive (yet unpublished) works feature a constitutional monarchy speaking a highly inflectional V-S-O language with Austronesian phonological features, and a recent Minecraft-based prototype of a theocratic city-state. Some other sources of joy for me include cooking, thrifting, contemplating about politics and philosophy, playing with election data, working out and trying out nice restaurants (these two cannot be decoupled), learning languages, enjoying a good episode of University Challenge or Grey’s Anatomy, walking in the wild, and like anybody else I enjoy good music.
on my digital whereabouts: These days, you can find me wandering in the vast lands of Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram/Threads. I am most accessible through my Denison email at nguyen_h10 at denison.edu. My technical work (so far mostly unpublished however) is on GitHub.