Materials Theory + Design Group

Congratulations to Henry on his recent thesis defense! He is excited for his next step, working in industry research in Hong Kong. We wish Henry the best in this position.

We are happy to announce Kyle has defended his thesis! He is now working as a research scientist at Citrine Informatics

We are proud to announce that Kathleen defended her thesis. We will miss her as she moves onto her next steps!

Maggie was awarded the Best Lightning Talk Session Two for her presentation “Structural Ordered Oxygen Vacancies for Ferroelectric and Magnetoelectric Materials Discovery” at the SUPREME (Superior Energy-Efficient Materials and Devices) Annual Review 2023. Congratulations Maggie!

Our very own Dr. Nathan Koocher defended his thesis!He gave an excellent presentation about materials with negative coefficients of thermal expansion and we wish him the best in future endeavors!

Our very own Dr. Lauren Walters defended her thesis! She gave a fantastic presentation on Thermodynamic and Electrochemical Models for Predicting Aqueous Materials Formation. We are so proud of Lauren for both her academic achievements and her outreach work. She will be sorely missed but she is moving on to do great things as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

Congratulation on your successful graduation, Xuezeng! Congratulation on your successful graduation, Xuezeng!

Xuezeng, Nathan, Yongjin, and Raymond attended the 2019 Fall MRS Meeting and presented their work. Xuezeng was awarded Silver medal in Graduate Student Award. Congratulation! Raymond contributed an oral presentation in Symposium EM04-Chemistry and Physics—Fundamentals titled “Designer Metal-Insulator Transition Compounds from Bayesian Optimization.” Xuezeng presented a poster in EL03-Ferroelectri…

Congratulations to Xuezeng for defending his PhD thesis! His dissertation titled “Strain engineered unusual polar-to-nonpolar transition and the emergent phenomena in hybrid improper phenomena in hybrid improper ferroelectrics” explores the tunability of epitaxial strain which can strategically control multiferroic behavior in solid-state materials.

Congratulations to Daniel on passing his qualifier and becoming an official PhD candidate! His proposed thesis is on design of non-centrosymmetric metals, rare materials which unite two properties, a polar structure and metallic conduction, previously thought to be impossible to combine.

Prof. Rondinelli was elected to serve on the DMP Executive Committee:of the American Physical Society. His 3 year term begins following the 2018 March Meeting in Los Angeles, CA. DMP is one of 16 Divisions of the APS, which focuses on applying fundamental condensed matter concepts to complex and multiphase media, including materials of technological […]

Congratulations to Nenian for defending his PhD thesis! His dissertation titled “Towards rational design of functional fluoride and oxyfluoride materials from first-principles” explores the chemistry and physics enable in solid-state materials that combining two anions within a single transition metal anion group.

Professor Rondinelli has been selected to receive the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Materials Research Society (MRS) “for pioneering advances in the theoretical understanding of atomic structure-electronic property relations of complex inorganic oxides in bulk, thin film, and superlattice geometries.” The award recognizes outstanding, interdisciplinary scientific work in materials…

Finding new functional materials is always tricky. But searching for very specific properties among a relatively small family of known materials is even more difficult. But Joshua Young and Prof. Rondinelli collaborating with Dr. Balachandran and Dr. Lookman of Los Alamos National Laboratory report a workaround in their article titled, “Learning from data to design functional materials with…

Yongjin presents at the 2017 Electronic Materials and Applications Meeting (EMA 2017) of the American Ceramics Society. His contributed talk titled “Understanding the A-Cation Order Dependent Band Gap Variation in Ruddlesden-Popper Oxides” in the symposium on the Computational Design of Electronic Materials on January 20, 2017 in Orlando, FL.

Nenian receives one of ten Ovshinsky Student Travel Awards from the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Materials Physics/Division of Condensed Matter Physics (DMP/DCMP) for the 2017 APS March Meeting in New Orleans. The Ovshinsky Awards are named after Stanford and Iris Ovshinsky and were endowed by the Ovshinsky family, their colleagues at Energy Conversion […]

Daniel Hickox-Young has been named a finalist in the KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) DIY Electronic Innovation Challenge. He has been invited to attend the 2017 KAUST-NSF Researh Conference on Interactive Electronics for his work designing a conductive polymer-based pen along with his partner on the project, Luke Prestowitz. The KAUST DIY […]

Danilo and Liang attended the 2016 Fall MRS Meeting and presented their work in two symposia: Danilo presented an oral contribution in Symposium EM5-Materials and Mechanisms of Correlated Electronic Phenomena in Oxide Heterostructures titled “Design Strategy for Novel Mott Multiferroics” on November 28. Liang gave his talk titled “Accurate Ni Electrochemical Phase Diagrams from Comparative […]

Professor Rondinelli presents an invited talk titled “Design of New Multiferroics at the Interfaces of Conducting Complex Oxides,” at the 2016 CNMS Users Meeting at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Directed Assembly of Materials and Interfaces session. The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) User Meeting at Oak Ridge National Laboratory highlights the research achievements by […]

MTD Group members gathered at Prof. Rondinelli’s to celebrate Emrys Tennessen passing his MS Defense and to enjoy the mild Chicago summer. Missing group members were globetrotting abroad.