People

Principal Investigator

Garritt J. Tucker, Ph.D.

Associate Professor | Director of Graduate Studies

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Materials Science Program

CoorsTek 201

303-273-3974

tucker@mines.edu

Google Scholar Citations

Curriculum Vitae

Professor Tucker joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at Mines in the summer of 2017 as an Assistant Professor and is active in the interdisciplinary Materials Science program at Mines. Before joining the faculty at Mines, he spent 4 years as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA), and 2 years as a Postdoctoral Research Appointee at Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, NM) in the Computational Materials and Data Science group. While at Drexel, he was awarded the Outstanding Teacher Award in 2015 and the TMS Young Leader Professional Development Award in 2016. Professor Tucker earned his Ph.D. in 2011 from the Georgia Institute of Technology (School of Materials Science and Engineering), and a B.S. in 2004 from Westminster College (Salt Lake City, UT) majoring in both Physics and Mathematics. During his time at Westminster and Georgia Tech, he received several distinctions including the Outstanding Physics Senior Award, Academic All-American (Soccer), and a Sigma Xi nomination.

His research ambitions are aimed at integrating high-performance computing and theory to discover the fundamental structure-property relationships of materials that will enable the predictive design of advanced materials with tunable properties. Of particular interest are materials where defects and interfacial-driven properties can be effectively tuned or controlled to enable property enhancement, such as nanocrystalline alloys, multicomponent laminates, materials for energy storage, 2D materials, and hierarchical metals. At the core of his group’s approach is to develop collaborations and programs that effectively mesh computation with experiments to tailor functional materials, and pursue novel informatics techniques to build predictive

research Faculty

Ankit Gupta, Ph.D.

  • Started February 2018
  • PhD Carnegie Mellon University
  • Research Areas: Multi-scale modeling and fundamental deformation mechanics

Ankit’s primary research focuses on nanostructured materials/alloys with an emphasis on inverse design methodologies with computational modeling. He recently graduated with a PhD degree in the field of materials modeling from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His PhD thesis concentrated on multi-scale modeling of mechanical behavior of carbon nanotube aerogels, supervised by Prof. Elizabeth Holm.

Ankit’s current research interests include designing models and simulations across multiple scales aimed towards better understanding the mechanical behavior of a material. This includes determining the fundamental deformation mechanism as well as predicting and developing materials with tailored and improved mechanical properties. He is also interested in developing better integration approaches for multiscale models in order to minimize the associated information loss.

Graduate Students

Jacob Gruber

  • Started in Fall 2013
  • B.S., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Materials Science, and Physics, 2013
  • Research Areas: Computational Materials Design: Defect-Engineering in Nanostructured Materials, Materials Informatics and Machine Learning

Steven goldy

  • Started in Fall 2021 (Mechanical Engineering)
  • ME Department Fellow
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Aeronautical Engineering (B.S), Computer Science (B.S) 2021
  • Research Areas: Advanced materials for optical technologies and 2D material based composites

Aidan Raver

  • Started in Fall 2022 (Metallurgical and Materials Engineering)
  • MME Department Fellow
  • B.S., The Ohio State University, Materials Science and Engineering, 2022
  • Research Areas: Atomistic simulations of MAX phases and MXenes

Former CMSD Group members

Jacob Tavenner, Ph.D.

  • Ph.D.,  Colorado School of Mines, Materials Science Program, 2021
  • B.S., Colorado School of Mines, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, 2017
  • Research Areas: Grain Boundary Structure-Property Relationships, Machine Learning, Strain Functional Descriptors, and Virtual Reality for STEM

 

Gabriel Plummer, Ph.D.

  • Ph.D., Colorado School of Mines, Materials Science Program, 2021
  • B.S./M.S.  Drexel University, Materials Science and Engineering, 2017
  • Research Areas: Atomistic Modeling of Deformation Mechanisms in MAX phases, and enabling advanced functionality in 2D Materials
  • CoorsTek Fellowship Recipient

 

Jacob Cordell, Ph.D.

  • Ph.D., Colorado School of Mines, Materials Science Program, 2021
  • B.S. Pennsylvania State University (Materials Science and German)
  • Research Areas: Computational materials design for renewable energy applications
  • NREL Fellowship Recipient

 

Satish Rajaram,  ph.d.

  • Drexel University, Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics – December 2019
  • M.S. Drexel University (Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics)
  • B.S. Rutgers University (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)
  • Research Areas: Understanding the Mechanistic Role of Grain Boundaries on the Strength and Deformation of Nanocrystalline Metals using Atomistic Simulations

 

Meghnath Jaishi, Ph.D.

  • September 2018 – July 2020 (Postdoctoral Scientist)
  • PhD Michigan Technological University
  • Research Areas: Computational Modeling of Shape Memory Alloys

 

Sanaz Yazdanparast, Ph.D.

  • August 2018 – August 2020 (Postdoctoral Scientist)
  • Ph.D., University of Missouri-Rolla
  • Research Areas: 2D Materials Synthesis and Switching

 

 

Annika Fash-White

  • B.S. University of Michigan (Materials Science and Electrical Engineering)
  • Research Areas: 2D materials for energy applications, multiscale modeling

Bryce Frazee

  • Joined the CMSD research group in Summer 2018 as a Citrine Informatics NextGen Fellow
  • B.S. student in Physics, M.S. student in Materials Science (Colorado School of Mines)
  • Research Areas: Materials Informatics and Machine Learning, Computational Modeling of Quantum Bit Environments

 

Saurabh Das

  • M.S. Colorado School of Mines, 2019
  • B. Tech National Institute of Technology, Calicut (Mechanical Engineering)
  • Research Areas: Simulations of Shape Memory Alloys  for Additive Manufacturing

 

 

 

Daniel Foley, Ph.D. 

  • Ph.D., Drexel University, Materials Science and Engineering,  2017
  • B.S./M.S. University of New Hampshire (Mechanical Engineering), 2013
  • Research Areas: Atomistic simulations of interfacial damage and metallic nanolaminates

 

Dana Bronen

  • M.S., Drexel University, Materials Science and Engineering, 2016
  • Research Area: Computational modeling of strength optimization in multi-component metallic nanolaminates