Honors and Awards

Thesis Research Fellowship, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1983-1984) National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow (1987-1988) Award for Excellence, Sandia National Laboratories (1993) Editorial Board, "Methods in Materials Science" (1997) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (AGARD) Invited Lecturer (1997) Member, Materials Science Critical Technology Sector/Phase Transitions, American Society of Metals (200-2010) Collins Scholar, Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education, University of Illinois-Champaign (2000) Fellow, American Physical Society (2003) Xerox Award for Faculty Research, University of Illinois-Champaign (2004) Listed in Who's Who in America (2005) Bliss Faculty Scholar, University of Illinois-Champaign (2005-2009) Member-at-Large (elected), Division of Computational Physics, American Physical Society (2008-2008) Silver "Humie" Award, with student K. Sastry, human competitive award at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference and Best Paper in Real World Applications track (2006) Chair-Elect, Division of Computational Physics, American Physical Society (2008-2010) NCSA Faculty Fellow, University of Illinois-Champaign (2009) Ivan Racheff Professor of Materials Science, University of Illinois-Champaign (2009-2010) Invited Professor, Ecole Centrale Paris (2010-2013) Special Editor for Computer Physics Communication (2010-2012) F. Wendell Miller Professor of Energy Science, Iowa State University (2010-present) DoE Hydrogen Program 2010 "Special Recognition Award" for the Metal-Hydride Center of Excellence "In Recognition of Outstanding Contributions to the Department of Energy (June 8, 2010)

Materials Theory and Modeling, Computational Materials Science, and Materials Discovery

"Computational Materials Science" - attempts to mold modern theories of materials phenomena and their computational solution in order to predict properties and characterize materials.

Thermodynamics and chemistry of materials via electronic-structure based methods, e.g., structual-ordering transitions in and properties of multicomponent alloys Mechanical properties by integration of generalized defect energy surfaces and mesoscale dislocation mechanics Multiscale modeling for spatial and temporal scales Energy-storage and catalytic properties of supported nanoassemblies New computational methods and algorithms to perform reliable materials discover and/or design