(66b) Materials for Efficient Future

Advancements in science and technology are enabling researchers across the world to develop and design materials for a better future. There are mainly two driving forces for innovations in materials - sustainability and consumer preferences. Efforts to separate and retrieve rare earth materials from earth’s crust have led to the development and utilization of new and improved material-based technologies. These technologies are used for highly efficient energy production, storage, and management. Consumer preferences shift as new materials are being developed and existing materials are improved to solve problems and fulfill needs in daily lives. Daily used materials around us are constantly improving based on demands and usage. Current acceleration in materials innovation is driven by advancement in enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence and material simulations. Progress in computational power has opened new avenues to perform exascale computing that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. My research philosophy is to make scientific progress towards obtaining sustainability through materials innovations using classical, ab-initio simulations and machine learning tools. To enable this, I plan to focus on three main research goals: (1) separating rare earth elements from mineral ores, (2) obtaining nitride-based ceramic from photothermal treatments of polymers, and (3) Moire patterns in perovskite materials for superconductivity.