Alejandro Strachan is a scientist in the field of computational materials and a professor of materials engineering at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

. Before joining

, he was a staff member at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

Education

Strachan studied physics at the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires ( es, Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) is a public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Established in 1821, it is the premier institution of higher learning in the country and one of the most prestigi ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. He received his master's of science there in 1995, followed by his PhD in 1998. He then moved to

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

, first as a postdoctoral scholar and then as a research scientist until 2002.

Research and career

Strachan became a staff scientist in the Theoretical Division of

in 2002, staying until becoming a faculty member at Purdue in 2005. He became a full professor in 2013. Strachan's research focuses on the development of predictive atomistic and molecular simulation methodologies to describe materials, primarily

density functional theory Density-functional theory (DFT) is a computational quantum mechanical modelling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure (or nuclear structure) (principally the ground state) of many-body ...

and

molecular dynamics Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamic "evolution" of t ...

. With these methods he studies problems of technological importance including coupled electronic, thermal, and mechanical processes in nano-electronics,

MEMS Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), also written as micro-electro-mechanical systems (or microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems) and the related micromechatronics and microsystems constitute the technology of microscopic devices, ...

and energy conversion devices; thermo-mechanical response and chemistry of

polymers A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic an ...

, polymer composites, and molecular solids; as well as active materials including

shape-memory alloy In metallurgy, a shape-memory alloy (SMA) is an alloy that can be deformed when cold but returns to its pre-deformed ("remembered") shape when heated. It may also be called memory metal, memory alloy, smart metal, smart alloy, or muscle wire. P ...

s and high-energy density materials. He also actively focuses on

uncertainty quantification Uncertainty quantification (UQ) is the science of quantitative characterization and reduction of uncertainties in both computational and real world applications. It tries to determine how likely certain outcomes are if some aspects of the system a ...

across the field of materials modelling. He previously served as the Deputy Director of the NNSA Center for the Prediction of Reliability, Integrity and Survivability of Microsystems (PRISM). He is currently co-principal investigator for the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN) and

nanoHUB nanoHUB.org is a science and engineering gateway comprising community-contributed resources and geared toward education, professional networking, and interactive simulation tools for nanotechnology. Funded by the United States National Science F ...

(with

principal investigator In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often us ...

Gerhard Klimeck Gerhard Klimeck is a German-American scientist and author in the field of nanotechnology. He is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. As the director of nanoHUB, h ...

) and co-leads the Center for Predictive Material and Devices (c-PRIMED), also with Klimeck. Strachan is also active in education, particularly through

, including the fully open and online course ''"From Atoms to Materials: Predictive Theories and Simulations"''.

Awards

* Purdue University ''Teaching for Tomorrow'' award, 2007. * The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society Early Career Faculty Fellow Award 2009. * Purdue University College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Award. Team Award: PRISM, 2009. * Purdue University Faculty Scholar (2012-2017)

Selected publications and editorials

* Development of a

ReaxFF ReaxFF (for “reactive force field”) is a bond order-based force field developed by Adri van Duin, William A. Goddard, III, and co-workers at the California Institute of Technology. One of its applications is molecular dynamics Molecular ...

reactive interatomic potential for energetic materials and study of shock behavior * Prediction of polymer properties from

* Exploration of atomic-level mechanisms in nanoscale memory devices * Guest editor with

and

Mark Lundstrom Mark S. Lundstrom is an American electrical engineering researcher, educator, and author. He is known for contributions to the theory, modeling, and understanding of semiconductor devices, especially nanoscale transistors, and as the creator of th ...

of Special Issue in ''Computing in Science and Engineering'' on "Cyber-enabled simulations in nanoscale science and engineering" March/April 2010. * Guest editor with Stephen Foiles and David McDowell in ''

Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering ''Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the IOP Publishing eight times per year. The journal covers computational materials science including properties, structure, and ...

'' for the Focus Issue on Uncertainty Quantification in Materials Modelling" October 2019.

References

External links

From Atoms to Materials: Predictive Theories and SimulationsSchool of Materials Engineering Faculty Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Strachan, Alejandro Purdue University faculty Engineering educators Materials scientists and engineers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people