Team
Who we are
Team
The minds behind the models, simulations, and innovations.
Principal Investigator
Prasanna V. Balachandran — Heinz and Doris Wilsdorf Research Associate Professor
- Postdoctoral Training
-
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA (2014-2017)
- Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA (2012-2014)
- Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA (2012-2012)
- Ph.D.
- Materials Science and Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA (2011)
- B.E.
- Metallurgical Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India (2007)
Email: pvb5e(at)virginia(dot)edu
Postdoctoral Research Scholars
Shunshun Liu
- Name (last, first)
- Liu, Shunshun
- Hometown
- Wuhan, Hubei, China
- Degree
- PhD, Materials Science and Engineering (2026)
- Research Interest
- Integrating ML/AI and computational materials science to accelerate the design of complex materials.
- Favorite Element
- Molybdenum (Mo)
- Favorite Material
- High-entropy alloys
- Favorite vi/emacs Command
- ls
- Favorite LLM
- GPT
Graduate Students
Ankita Biswas
- Name (last, first)
- Biswas, Ankita
- Hometown
- Kolkata, India
- Joined Group
- Spring 2021
- Degree
- PhD (in progress), Materials Science and Engineering
- Research Interest
- I use interpretable, physics guided machine learning to uncover how changes in atomic structure affect the structure-property relationships in materials
- Favorite Element
- Carbon (C)
- Favorite Material
- Graphene
- Favorite vi/emacs Command
- ?
- Favorite LLM
- Claude Opus 5, DeepSeek-V4 Pro
Ryan Grimes
- Name (last, first)
- Grimes, Ryan
- Hometown
- Joined Group
- Fall 2021
- Degree
- PhD (in progress), Materials Science and Engineering
- Research Interest
- Favorite Element
- Favorite Material
- Favorite vi/emacs Command
- Favorite LLM
Sunidhi Garg
- Name (last, first)
- Garg, Sunidhi
- Hometown
- New Delhi, India
- Joined Group
- Fall 2023
- Degree
- PhD (in progress), Materials Science and Engineering
- Research Interest
- Studying the structure-processing-property relationships using first principles calculations and physics-informed machine learning
- Favorite Element
- Molybdenum (Mo)
- Favorite Material
- MgB2
- Favorite vi/emacs Command
- u
- Favorite LLM
- Claude
Talon Booth
- Name (last, first)
- Booth, Talon
- Hometown
- Riner, VA
- Joined Group
- Fall 2024
- Degree
- MS (in progress), Materials Science and Engineering
- Research Interest
- Software development, machine learning for materials applications, and UI/UX for web apps.
- Favorite Element
- Iridium (Ir)
- Favorite Material
- Ammonium Nitrate
- Favorite vi/emacs Command
- u
- Favorite LLM
- OpenAI’s ChatGPT
Yifei Duan
- Name (last, first)
- Duan, Yifei
- Hometown
- Henan, China
- Joined Group
- Fall 2025
- Degree
- PhD (in progress), Materials Science and Engineering
- Research Interest
- First-principles calculations, machine learning, and AI agents.
- Favorite Element
- Kryptonite (First taught by the host at UVA Pizza Chat)
- Favorite Material
- Aerogel
- Favorite vi/emacs Command
- :wq (Save, quit, and call it a day)
- Favorite LLM
- Gemini (Better multimodality)
Conor Moran
- Name (last, first)
- Moran, Conor
- Hometown
- Oakton, VA
- Joined Group
- Fall 2026
- Degree
- PhD (in progress), Materials Science and Engineering
- Research Interest
- Inverse design, property prediction, active learning, physics-informed ML
- Favorite Element
- Gallium (Ga)
- Favorite Material
- Perovskites
- Favorite LLM
- Gemini 3.6 Flash
Alumni
- Timothy Q. Hartnett, PhD (2023)
- Mukil V. Ayyasamy, PhD (2023)
- Roberto Herrera del Valle, MS (2023)