Dr. Pounds' research interest are primarily centered around the theoretical chemical physics of semiconductor surfaces. Recent work has focused on methods to predict the global minimum molecular geometries of adsorbates on semiconductor surfaces. This is accomplished by incorporating rudimentary molecular electronic structure methods with minimization procedures derived from chaotic dynamics. These techniques facilitate more detailed electronic structure calculations which can be used to elucidate the chemistry taking place at the semiconductor surface.   Once the chemistry is understood, it can be exploited in the fabrication of microelectronic devices.

Another research interest is the development of computational techniques for solving problems in mathematical physics.   Current work is focused  on finding fast and stable techniques for the evaluation of integrals used in molecular electronic structure calculations.   These methods are designed to avoid the customary transformation to a local (ellipsoidal) coordinate system. By avoiding this coordinate transformation, one is able to easily extend these calculations to high performance vector and parallel computing platforms.

Dr. Pounds is also interested in combining WWW and networking software with distributed high performance computational and graphics systems to develop new resources for science education. Current work is centered around developing a web interface and networking system that allows users to enter atomic positions for a molecule and then view, in real time, any molecular orbital for the system. This system also allows the user to view, as a series of images, the formation and breaking of bonds resulting from the interaction of the molecular orbitals.