Schedule-At-A-Glance

(As of July 6, 2023) – Schedule subject to change.

All times are in US Central Time (CT)

Registration Pricing

Speaker: Rami Ramprasad, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) has heralded a sea change in the philosophy of materials design. In an increasing number of applications, the successful deployment of novel materials has benefited from the use of computational, experimental and informatics methodologies. Here, we describe the role played by computational and experimental data generation and capture, polymer fingerprinting, machine-learning based property prediction models, algorithms for designing polymers meeting target property requirements, and above all, how prior physics knowledge may be incorporated with polymer informatics workflows. These efforts have culminated in the creation of an online Polymer Informatics platform (https://www.polymergenome.org) to guide ongoing and future polymer discovery and design [1-3]. Challenges that remain will be examined, and systematic steps that may be taken to extend the applicability of such informatics efforts to a wide range of technological domains will be discussed. These include strategies to deal with the data bottleneck, new methods to represent polymer morphology and processing conditions, and the applicability of emerging AI algorithms for materials design.

Speaker Profile
Prof. Ramprasad is presently the Michael E. Tennenbaum Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His area of expertise is the development and application of computational and machine learning tools to accelerate materials discovery, as applicable to energy production, storage and utilization. Prof. Ramprasad received his B. Tech. in Metallurgical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, an M.S. degree in Materials Science & Engineering at the Washington State University, and a Ph.D. degree also in Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign .Prof. Ramprasad is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and the Max Planck Society Fellowship for Distinguished Scientists. He has authored or co-authored over 225 peer-reviewed journal articles, 8 book chapters and 8 patents, and has delivered over 300 invited talks at Universities and Conferences worldwide. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of npj Computational Materials, ACS Materials Letters and Journal of Physical Chemistry A/B/C, and is the Chair of the inaugural 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Computational Materials Science and Engineering. 

Speaker Profile

Machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) enable the accurate simulation of materials at larger sizes and time scales, and play increasingly important roles in the computational understanding and design of materials. This talk will discuss the past, present and future of MLIPs, with a focus on the different architectures that have been developed over the years and their myriad technological applications. We will outline the major challenges that remain, particularly with respect to the generation of accurate training data, and potential areas for further development. 

Shyue Ping Ong is a Professor of NanoEngineering at the University of California, San Diego. He obtained his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011. He leads the Materials Virtual Lab at UCSD, a dynamic group of materials scientists focusing on the interdisciplinary application of materials science, computer science, and data science to accelerate materials design. He is one of the founding developers of the Materials Project, a DOE-funded initiative to make the computed properties of all known materials publicly available for materials innovation.  He is also the founder of Python Materials Genomics (pymatgen), an open-source materials analysis library that is used by hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Dr Ong is a recipient of the US Department of Energy Early Career Research Program and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program awards and a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in 2021 and 2022. 

Speaker Profile

Hitoshi Washizu received his Ph.D. from University of Tokyo in physical chemistry (molecular simulation of polymer solution). His main research field is dynamics of molecules on surfaces, especially in tribology. Based on his 14-year career in automotive laboratory, work in MEXT next-generation supercomputer project, Element strategy project, NEDO wind turbine project, he is a specialist in supercomputing and collaboration research with industries. He is also Research Center Professor at the Elements Strategy Initiative for Catalysts and Batteries (ESICB), Kyoto University.

Q. Jane Wang is a professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University. She has devoted her research to advancing the field of tribology—the study of friction on surfaces. Her research group studies tribological interfaces from integrated theories for contact and interfacial mechanics, numerical simulations, model-based designs of machine elements and surfaces, failure-prevention methods, and novel lubrication technologies, working with industries toward future technologies for energy efficient, highly reliable machinery. 

Marie Clelia Righi is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Bologna. Her research focuses on the development and application of computational methods to understand and predict the behavior of materials from first principles, particularly of surface and interface phenomena. She adopted pioneering computational approaches in tribology and applied them for understanding chemical reactions activated by mechanical stresses and designing materials to reduce friction. In 2019, she received an ERC consolidator grant for the project “Advancing solid interfaces and lubricants by first principles material design.” She is a visiting professor at the Imperial College London, UK, and collaborates with different multinational companies and international experimental labs. She is part of the editorial boards of Coatings, Lubricants, Lubrication Science, and Scientific Reports.

Speaker Profile