by Colin Poitras (UConn Today)

As scientists across the country work to unlock the potential of new materials as part of President Obama’s Materials Genome Initiative, materials modeling experts like Avinash Dongare are in high demand.

Dongare uses his skills in computational materials science to delve deep into the atomic microstructure of materials to find the optimal mix of components experimental scientists need to build stronger, faster, lighter, and more resilient steels, plastics, ceramics, and other materials.

Using advanced algorithms, Dongare’s computer simulations screen out weaker or more problematic structures in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

“To run an experiment and do analysis costs a lot of money and a lot of time,” says Dongare, one of eight new tenure-track professors brought in to UConn’s School of Engineering this year as part of President Susan Herbst’s Faculty 500 initiative. “And it’s very difficult to identify individual processes at the atomic level, because researchers often don’t have that kind of equipment.

Read the full profile here.