Rebecca Walde grew up in Warner Robins, GA. She did her undergrad in chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) where she did research with Joseph Sadighi looking into the bonding and properties of low valent copper (I) and gold (I) species supported by N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) for CO reduction. While in undergrad she also spent a summer at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab working with Brett Helms on infinitely recyclable plastics. Ultimately, she landed at UW Madison to begin her Ph.D. studies where she joined the Berry group in late 2021 to study metal-metal bonding. In her free time she likes to go hiking, read, play video games, and cook or bake.
In the Berry group Rebecca currently works on the HEMAC project synthesizing new metal-metal bonded compounds for molecular conductance measurements. She focuses on trimetallic compounds involving a Mo-Mo quadruple bond, studying how the magnetic and electronic properties change when the third metal is swapped out or the ligands are modified. Currently, she is working on studying how electron donating equatorial ligands modify the properties of the HEMACs.