People Highlights
EFree partner Brent Fultz (Caltech) has been elected a 2017 Fellow of the American Physical Society in the Division of Materials Physics. Congratulations Brent!
A LinkedIn group has been created for energy scientists involved in EFRC, Hub and CMS centers to connect and share updates and ideas. If you are interested in connecting, the link is here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10351421/profile
At the 254th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, held on August 20-24 in Washington DC, the symposium “Theoretical Models of Chemical Bonding and Reactivity Spanning the Periodic Table” was held in honor of Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
The symposium offered a broad perspective on recent...
As a member of the DOE Early Career Network (ECN), Carnegie Postdoctoral Associate Michael Guerette helped to organize social events open to attendees of the 2017 EFRC PI meeting, which was held on July 24-25 in Washington, DC. Attendees had the opportunity to visit the National Air and Space Museum, enjoy a board-game themed dinner at a...
Carnegie Postdoc Zachary Geballe, who has worked on the EFree Electron Transport in Light Element Materials project, has been honored with Carnegie’s seventh Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence (PIE) Award. These prizes are made through nominations from the departments and are chosen by Carnegie's Office of the President. Zack was awarded the...
EFree Director Russell Hemley was appointed as a Mary Upson Visiting Professor at the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University from March-May, 2017. While at Cornell, he worked in the group of EFree Partners Roald Hoffmann and Neil Ashcroft and took part in the CHESS User Meeting and Workshops.
In addition, he presented...
EFree External Advisory Committee member Rodney Ewing (Stanford) was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017. Congratulations Rod!
In May, EFree Director Russell Hemley presented a Distinguished Lecture at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Applied Physics Laboratory Colloquium at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). His lecture at ARL was titled "New Materials and Phenomena at Extreme Conditions," and his lecture at APL was titled "A New World of Extreme Environments."
EFree Affiliated Scientist Bianca Haberl has been named High Pressure Science Coordinator in the Neutron Science Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In her new role, she will be working to develop and consolidate high pressure neutron scattering methods at the different beamlines of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the High...
EFree Partner Roald Hoffmann gave two invited lectures at Penn State University as a part of their Marker Lecture Series, from November 30-December 1.
Videos of his lectures can be found here:
Protochemistries are a Bridge
All the Ways to Have a Bond
The Marker Lecture Series is named in honor of Penn State's Professor Emeritus Russell Marker,...
Former EFree Graduate Student Max Murialdo has aceptted a postdoctoral position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He will be working on materials science problems associated with additive manufacturing. Earlier this year, Max successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at Caltech. His thesis was entitled "Anomalous thermodynamics of nonideal...
We are pleased to welcome five new students and postdocs to EFree: Sabri Elatresh (Cornell); Damian Paliwoda (Lehigh); Xiao Tong (Caltech); Nick Weadock (Caltech); and Enshi Xu (George Washington), who was formerly an EFree graduate student at Penn State.
United Press International quoted EFree Director Russell Hemley about new work led by External Advisory Committee member Giulia Galli on "How carbon gets absorbed deep underground."
EFree Postdoctoral Associate Sabri Elatresh (Cornell) and Graduate Students Xiang Li (Penn State) and Yiqun Liu (Lehigh) won "Best Poster" awards at the 2016 EFree Annual Meeting. They received prizes of books authored by EFree Senior Investigators: Phase transitions in Matierials by Brent Fultz (Caltech), The Same and Not the Same by Roald...
Chen Li, Neutron Scattering Coordinator for the past two years, has acepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California - Riverside. He will continue his involvement with EFree as an Affiliated Scientist. We thank Chen for his many contributions to the Center as one of our Technical...
EFree Postdoc Venkat Bhadram (Carnegie) was one of three selected for best poster awards at the Gordon Research Seminar, which was held before the Gordon Research Conference in July at the Holderness School in New Hampshire. The winners of the poster awards gave five-minute short work presentations during the Gordon Research Conference. His poster...
EFree Graduate Student Max Murialdo has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at Caltech. His thesis is entitled "Anomalous thermodynamics of nonideal gas physisorption on nanostructured carbons."
EFree was strongly represented at the American Conference on Neutron Scattering, which was held July 10-14, 2016 aboard the RMS Queen Mary, a retired ocean liner now permanently moored in Long Beach, CA.
Director Russell Hemley gave a plenary lecture entitled “Materials in Extreme Environments — New Opportunities for Neutron Scattering."
Senior...
Konstantin Lokshin, a research scientist at the Joint Institute for Neutron Studies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has joined EFree as a Technical Coordinator. Lokshin will focus on transport measurements at high pressure in support of the Novel Electron Transport in Light Element Materials project. He will also be actively involved in...
The Journal of Chemical Physics has selected the Naumov, Hemley, Hoffmann, and Ashcroft paper "Chemical bonding in hydrogen and lithium under pressure" [J. Chem. Phys. 143, 064702 (2015)] as one of its 2015 Editors' Choice Articles. 65 articles were selected by the journal's editors as being the most innovative and influential articles of 2015.
...
EFree Postdoc Michael Guerette was one of the representatives from Carnegie at the fourth USA Science and Engineering Festival, held in Washington DC from April 16-17, 2016. The Festival provided over 3,000 hands-on science and engineering activities for people of all ages.
More information on the Festival can be found here.
EFree Director Russell Hemley gave three invited lectures at Penn State University as a part of their Marker Lecture Series, from April 6-8 2016. He gave lectures to Penn State's Department of Chemistry and Department of Physics, as well as a public lecture.
Pdfs of his lectures can be found here:
New Views of Chemical Bonding under Pressure, ...
EFree University Partner Brent Fultz (Caltech) has been selected as a Fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America, with the citation, "For his outstanding record of leadership and service to the neutron scattering community, and important discoveries in the field of vibrational entropy and alloy thermodynamics." Election to fellowship in...
Michael Guerette has joined Carnegie as a postdoctoral associate. He is working with Tim Strobel on the New Solar Materials project in EFree, specifically Si24 synthesis and property investigations. Previously, Michael was a postdoctoral researcher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he received his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering in 2014...
On February 9, 2016, EFree Partner Roald Hoffmann (Cornell) gave a Wigner Lecture at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His talk was titled "The chemical imagination at work in very tight places." A video of his talk is available on YouTube.
More information on the Wigner Distinguished Lecture Series
EFree External Advisory Committee member Alexandra Navrotsky (UC-Davis) has been awarded the 2016 Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Award from the Geochemical Society. The Goldschmidt Award is given annually for major achievements in geochemistry or cosmochemistry. It is the Geochemical Society's highest honor. The award will be presented at the 2016...
Tianshu Li from George Washington University has joined EFree as a University Partner. He will also take the position of Computational Theory Coordinator. Tianshu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at George Washington University. He received his PhD degree from the University of California -...
Nancy Ross from Virginia Tech has joined EFree as an Affiliated Scientist. Nancy is an expert high-pressure crystallographer and a former postdoc at Carnegie, recently Associate Dean at VT, and now head of the Geosciences Department. Her research explores the structure/property relations of framework materials at high pressure using a...
EFree Affiliated Scientist Muhtar Ahart (Carnegie) has been awarded an Alan Berman Research Publication Award from the Department of the Navy for 2016. This award was established by Dr. Alan Berman, the Naval Research Laboratory's fourth Director of Research, to recognize the best published technical writing(s) in each scientific division. Its...
DuckYoung Kim, long time member of the EFree team has moved on to join HPSTAR in Shanghai. He was a key member of EFree for seven years and most recently was the Computational Theory Coordinator. DuckYoung obtained his Ph.D. at Uppsala University in Sweden and conducted his postdoctoral study with the Theory of Condensed Matter (TCM) Group at...
Ajay Mishra has joind Carnegie as a postdoctoral associate. He is working on the Novel Electron Transport in Light Element Materials project in EFree, including the synthesis of hydrogen rich materials under extreme conditions. He characterizes these materials using XRD, Raman and IR measurements. Ajay is also interested in the behavior of...
Throughout the fall, many EFree scientists have given talks related to their work in the Center:
Russell Hemley gave a Physics Colloquium at Georgetown University entitled "Materials in Extreme Environments" on November 3. Discoveries and advances within EFree were the focus of the presentation. He also presented results from EFree science at...
Tianshu Li and John Tse have joined EFree as Affiliated Scientists. Tianshu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civial and Environmental Engineering at George Washington University and John is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics at the University of Saskatchewan. The list of EFree Affiliated Scientists at...
Former Postdoctoral Associate Caitlin Murphy has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the EPSA 20 (Energy Policy and Systems Analysis) Office at the Department of Energy. The office, which is directly under the supervision of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, focuses on providing supporting analysis for legislative and regulatory proposals...
EFree Synchrotron X-ray Coordinator Maria Baldini presented a talk at the Deep Carbon Observatory's Executive Committee Meeting. The meeting was held October 8-9 in Rome, Italy. Her talk was titled "Advances and opportunities for EFree and DCO." EFree Director Russell J, Hemley also provided an overview of energy related research in his capacity...
EFree Graduate Student Max Murialdo (Caltech) was named as one of the 16 finalists in the 2015 EFRC Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Reasearcher Competition. The finalists will all present talks during the EFRC Principal Investigators Meeting in October.
Carnegie Summer Scholars Anne Davis (Caltech), Keenan Brownsberger (Whitworth University), and Reed Mershon (University of Chicago) gave presentations on their research at Carnegie’s Broad Branch Road campus on August 14:
Anne Davis: Phase transitions in silicon quantum dots for solar energy conversion
Keenan Brownsberger: Synthesis of palladium...
Carnegie Summer Scholars Anne Davis (Caltech), Keenan Brownsberger (Whitworth University), and Reed Mershon (University of Chicago) gave presentations on their research at the monthly “Lunch and Learn” event at Carnegie’s P Street Headquarters on Friday, August 14. Lunch and Learn provides an opportunity for the non-scientific staff at Carnegie’s...
EFree University Partner Kai Landskron (Lehigh) was interviewed by Nature to discuss a new model for science funding. His funding efforts have also been featured in the Huffington Post and The Brown and White.
Carnegie is hosting two EFree-supported undergraduate interns this summer. Jackson Holaday is an student at the University of Southern California. He is returning for his second summer to work with Tim Strobel. He is assisting with the installation of a Paris-Edinburgh press. Also working with Tim is Anne Davis from Caltech. She working on the...
Hanyu Liu joins EFree as a Postdoctoral Associate. He is working with Russell Hemley and Ivan Naumov on carrying out theoretical and computational studies in support of the Novel Transport in Hydrogen Rich Materials project. He is also interested in studying the properties of materials at extreme conditions using molecular dynamics and crystal...
EFree University Partner Brent Fultz (Caltech) has been announced as the winner of the 2016 William Hume-Rothery Award of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS). The William Hume-Rothery Award, established in 1972, recognizes outstanding scholarly contributions to the science of alloys. The award will be presented during the 2016 TMS...
We are pleased to announce that Chen Li has been appointed Neutron Scattering Coordinator. Chen will serve as a liaison between research groups working on EFree projects and neutron beamlines at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and elsewhere. His main responsibility will be to facilitate the application of both existing and emerging neutron...
Venkata (Venkat) Bhadram joins EFree as a postdoctoral associate from Purdue University. He is working with Tim Strobel and Russell Hemley on the New Solar Materials project, and is also developing novel materials for photocatalytic water splitting. His work involves synthesis with both multi-anvil and diamond cell techniques, as well as...
We are pleased to announce that Maria Baldini has been appointed Synchrotron X-Ray Coordinator. Maria will serve as a liaison between research groups working on EFree projects and synchrotron beamlines at HPCAT and elsewhere. Her main responsibility will be to facilitate the application of both existing and emerging x-ray techniques to EFree...
In the mid-2000's I began to teach the third term of a graduate core course at Caltech covering thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and phase transitions. This course, "States of Matter", originally followed the classic book by David Goodstein of the same name. The content that I covered in the third term evolved towards materials science, but...
EFree Director Russell Hemley recently presented a talk entitled "H2O under Pressure" at the Workshop on Fundamental Problems in the Physics and Chemistry of Water, held in Houston TX on January 16-17, 2015. The workshop was hosted by the College of Science and Mathematics at the University of Houston.
The workshop was organized in response to...
EFree Associate Director Timothy Strobel gave an invited talk at the 7th Asian Conference on High-Pressure Research (ACHPR-7). The conference was held in Bangkok, Thailand from January 16-18. The conference was attended by more than 100 high-pressure scientists from all over the world.
Strobel talk was titled "New Low-Density Allotrope of...
A staged reading of EFree University Partner Roald Hoffmann's play, Should've, was held at the National Academy of Science in Washington, DC on October 27, 2014. For more information on the staged reading of Should've, click here. To read the play, click here.
DuckYoung Kim, postdoctoral fellow at the Geophysical Laboratory, received the 2013 Jamieson Award at the AIRAPT Conference in Seattle on July 7, 2013. This award is given for outstanding achievement by a graduate student or postdoctoral researcher in the field of high pressure research. AIRAPT President Tetsuo Irifune presented the award.
Kim...
