Materials Research Lecture

Devising strategies for predictive simulations of materials encompasses understanding complex microscopic processes and providing robust interpretation of increasingly complex experiments, in addition to optimizing data. We will discuss these concepts with focus on predictions of the chemical and physical properties of realistic materials for energy applications, including solar, photo-electrochemical and thermoelectric energy conversion. We will address two intertwined questions: what is the impact of microscopic theories and first principles simulations on materials for energy? How do we take up the challenge of building much tighter connections between computational and laboratory experiments?

More about the speaker: Giulia Galli is the Liew Family professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. She also holds a Senior Scientist position at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and she is a Senior Fellow of the UChicago/ANL Computational Institute. Prior to joining UChicago and ANL, she was Professor of Chemistry and Physics at UCD (2005-2013) and the head of the Quantum Simulations group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1998-2005). She holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of the AAAS and was elected chair of the Division of Computational Physics of the APS in 2006. She is the recipient of an award of excellence from the Department of Energy (2000) and of the Science and Technology Award from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (2004). She served as chair of the Extreme Physics and Chemistry of Carbon Directorate of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) in 2010-2013. Her research activity is focused on quantum simulations of systems and processes relevant to condensed matter physics, physical chemistry, materials and nano-science (http://galligroup.uchicago.edu/).