Heather J. Kulik is an American computational materials scientist and engineer who is an associate professor of

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. Her research considers the computational design of new materials and the use of artificial intelligence to predict material properties.

Early life and education

Kulik earned her bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering at

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

in 2004. She moved to the

for her graduate studies, where she joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and worked under the supervision of Nicola Marzari. During her doctoral research, she introduced a

Hubbard Hubbard may refer to: Places Canada *Hubbard, Saskatchewan *Hubbards, Nova Scotia Canada/United States * Mount Hubbard, a mountain on the Alaska/Yukon border *Hubbard Glacier, a large freshwater glacier in Alaska and Yukon Greenland *Hubbard Gla ...

''U'' term to

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 ...

calculations, which improved the study of transition metal complexes. Density functional theory allows for the prediction and study of new materials with limited computational cost. Amongst these materials, Kulik concentrated on transition metal complexes, as their highly localized electrons make the unphysical decollimation that occurs in the simplifications of DFT inappropriate. She graduated in 2009 with her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering. Kulik then conducted postdoctoral research with Felice Lightstone at the

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

. She then worked alongside Todd Martínez at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and

Judith Klinman Judith P. Klinman (born April 17, 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American chemist, biochemist, and molecular biologist known for her work on enzyme catalysis. She became the first female professor in the physical sciences at the Unive ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

on the large-scale electronic structures of biomolecules.

Research and career

In 2013, Kulik joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the Joseph R. Mares Career Development Chair. She specializes in computational modeling and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

to accelerate the discovery of new materials and catalysts. In particular, Kulik develops new strategies to improve the accuracy of density functional theory.

Awards and honors

* 2017 I&ECR, Class of 2017 Influential Researcher * 2018 DARPA Young Faculty Award * 2019

Journal of Physical Chemistry ''The Journal of Physical Chemistry A'' is a scientific journal which reports research on the chemistry of molecules - including their dynamics, spectroscopy, kinetics, structure, bonding, and quantum chemistry. It is published weekly by the Amer ...

Lectureship Award * 2019

National Science Foundation CAREER Award The National Science Foundation CAREER awards, presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF), are in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and education, and the integration of these endeavors i ...

* 2019 AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award * 2019

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Saville Lecturer * 2019 Novartis Early Career Award * 2020

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

Director's Fellowship Award * 2021

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

Selected publications

* * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kulik, Heather J. Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Cooper Union alumni American women physicists Artificial intelligence researchers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people