Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Department of Chemistry
Virginia Military Institute
Lexington, Virginia, USA
Prof. Shingledecker, a native of Virginia Beach, VA, joined the faculty of VMI in 2024. Before joining VMI, his first academic appointment was in 2020 as a member of a physics and astronomy department. Currently, he teaches courses in general chemistry, physical chemistry, and astrochemistry. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia in 2013, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2018 at the same university under the supervision of Prof. Eric Herbst, who is widely regarded as one of the fathers of astrochemistry. His graduate research focused on simulating cosmic-ray-driven radiation chemistry on interstellar dust grains and their ice mantles. After earning his Ph.D., he was awarded the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral research fellowship and spent two years in Germany working at both the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich with Prof. Dr. Paola Caselli, as well as at the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry in Stuttgart working with Prof. Dr. Johannes Kästner. Prof. Shingledecker has been chair of the American Chemical Society's astrochemistry subdivision as well as a guest editor of the journal ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. In astronomy, Prof. Shingledecker is a member of the American Astronomical Society and an elected member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Outside of research, Prof. Shingledecker enjoys dividing his time between too many hobbies, including hiking, gardening, model railroading, collecting/restoring old electronics, music, and reading.
Research in the Shingledecker group is in theoretical and computational astrochemistry. Prof. Shingledecker is one of the world's experts in designing, expanding, and running astrochemical computational models that seek to replicate the abundances of molecules detected in the interstellar medium, and in understanding their underlying chemistry. One particular focus of his research is on the interaction between either cosmic rays or UV photons and dust-grain ice mantles. Beyond his own research programs, he is a founding member of the GOTHAM collaboration led by Prof. Brett McGuire in the Department of Chemistry at MIT as well as the CORINOS group, led by Dr. Yao-Lun Yang at RIKEN in Japan.
Shingledecker, C.; Vogt-Geisse, S.; Mifsud, D.; Ioppolo, S. Dust and Surface Chemistry. In Astrochemical Modeling; Bovino, S., Grassi, T., Eds.; Elsevier, 2023.
Shingledecker, C. N.; Molpeceres, G.; Flowers, A. M.; Warren, D.; Stanley, E.; Remijan, A. A Gas-Phase “Top-down” Chemical Link between Aldehydes and Alcohols. Front. Astron. Space Sci. 2026, 12. doi:10.3389/fspas.2025.1664349
Wenzel, G.; Cooke, I. R.; Changala, P. B.; Bergin, E. A.; Zhang, S.; Burkhardt, A. M.; et al.; Shingledecker, C. N.; et al.; McGuire, B. A. Detection of Interstellar 1-Cyanopyrene: A Four-Ring Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon. Science 2024, 386 (6723), 810–813. doi:10.1126/science.adq6391
Bouwman, J.; McCabe, M. N.; Shingledecker, C. N.; Wandishin, J.; Jarvis, V.; Reusch, E.; Hemberger, P.; Bodi, A. Five-Membered Ring Compounds from the Ortho-Benzyne + Methyl Radical Reaction under Interstellar Conditions. Nature Astronomy 2023, 7, 423–430. doi:10.1038/s41550-023-01893-2
Yang, Y.-L.; Green, J. D.; Pontoppidan, K. M.; et al.; Shingledecker, C. N.; et al.; van Dishoeck, E. F. CORINOS. I. JWST/MIRI Spectroscopy and Imaging of a Class 0 Protostar IRAS 15398–3359. ApJL 2022, 941 (1), L13. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aca289
McGuire, B. A.; Loomis, R. A.; Burkhardt, A. M.; Lee, K. L. K.; Shingledecker, C. N.; et al.; McCarthy, M. C. Detection of Two Interstellar Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons via Spectral Matched Filtering. Science 2021, 371 (6535), 1265–1269. doi:10.1126/science.abb7535
Burkhardt, A. M.; Loomis, R. A.; Shingledecker, C. N.; Lee, K. L. K.; Remijan, A. J.; McCarthy, M. C.; McGuire, B. A. Ubiquitous Aromatic Carbon Chemistry at the Earliest Stages of Star Formation. Nature Astronomy 2021, 5, 181–187. doi:10.1038/s41550-020-01253-4
Shingledecker, C. N.; Álvarez-Barcia, S.; Korn, V. H.; Kästner, J. The Case of H2C3O Isomers, Revisited: Solving the Mystery of the Missing Propadienone. ApJ 2019, 878 (2), 80. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab1d4a
Shingledecker, C. N.; Lamberts, T.; Laas, J. C.; Vasyunin, A.; Herbst, E.; Kästner, J.; Caselli, P. Efficient Production of S8 in Interstellar Ices: The Effects of Cosmic-Ray-Driven Radiation Chemistry and Nondiffusive Bulk Reactions. ApJ 2020, 888 (1), 52. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab5360
Shingledecker, C. N.; Incerti, S.; Ivlev, A.; Emfietzoglou, D.; Kyriakou, I.; Vasyunin, A.; Caselli, P. Cosmic-Ray Tracks in Astrophysical Ices: Modeling with the Geant4-DNA Monte Carlo Toolkit. ApJ 2020, 904 (2), 189. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abbb30
Shingledecker, C. N.; Herbst, E. A General Method for the Inclusion of Radiation Chemistry in Astrochemical Models. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2018, 20 (8), 5359–5367. doi:10.1039/C7CP05901A
Shingledecker, C. N.; Tennis, J.; Gal, R. L.; Herbst, E. On Cosmic-Ray-Driven Grain Chemistry in Cold Core Models. ApJ 2018, 861 (1), 20. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aac5ee
McGuire, B. A.; Burkhardt, A. M.; Kalenskii, S.; Shingledecker, C. N.; Remijan, A. J.; Herbst, E.; McCarthy, M. C. Detection of the Aromatic Molecule Benzonitrile (c-C6H5CN) in the Interstellar Medium. Science 2018, 359 (6372), 202–205. doi:10.1126/science.aao4890
Abplanalp, M. J.; Gozem, S.; Krylov, A. I.; Shingledecker, C. N.; Herbst, E.; Kaiser, R. I. A Study of Interstellar Aldehydes and Enols as Tracers of a Cosmic Ray-Driven Nonequilibrium Synthesis of Complex Organic Molecules. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2016, 113 (28), 7727–7732. doi:10.1073/pnas.1604426113