So the other summer I did undergraduate research in computational chemistry. Doing research is part of my undergraduate studies in Chemistry. But because I am also a Computer Science major, I see the potential of computers to automate portions of the research process. Before I can explain how the process can be automated I need to give some chemistry background on relaxed scans. Put simply, relaxed scans calculate the energy level of a molecule as one of its coordinates is adjusted. For instance, consider methane, a carbon surrounded by four hydrogens in a tetrahedral shape. A relaxed scan can calculate the energy of the molecule as a hydrogen atom is removed. The first step is finding lowest energy structure of the molecule. Next, the bond length is slightly increased between carbon and hydrogen and then frozen. With the bond frozen the lowest energy structure is recalculated. The bond is stretched and frozen again. And again the lowest energy structure is calculated. The result is that after every stretch the molecule is allowed to relax to a new geometry. The cycle of stretch and relax is repeated 20 to 50 times. The stretch and relax process is accomplished using software, but each input file is created by copying text from previous output files. This is where I see the potential for some automation.