Biographical sketch

EFTHIMIOS KAXIRAS

Lyman Laboratory 339, Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138

Phone: 617-5957977, Fax: 617-4952545

Education:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology                    

Ph.D. in Physics                                                                                                1987

B.S. in Physics                                                                                                   1981

National Technical University of Athens, Greece                                               1977-78

Electrical Engineering (transferred to MIT)

 

Appointments :

              John Hasbrouck Van Vleck Professor of Pure and Applied Physics                      2010-

              Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics               1998-09

               Associate Professor of Physics and Applied Physics                                           1995-98

               Assistant Professor of Physics and Applied Physics                                            1991-95 

                    Department of Physics and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

                    Harvard University

             Director - Institute for Applied Computational Science, Harvard University             2010-

             Professor of Materials Science                                                                                2009-10

                    Laboratory for Multiscale Modeling of Materials                                               

                    Institute of Materials, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL)

              Director - Initiative in Innovative Computing, Harvard University                           2008-09

              Director - Biomedical Research Institute, FORTH  Ioannina, Greece                    2002-04

              Acting Department Chair and Visiting Professor                                                    2002-04

                    Department of Materials Science and Technology, University of Ioannina

              Associate Director                                                                                                  2001-02

                    Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University

              Consulting Research Physicist                                                                               1989-91

                    Complex Systems Theory Branch, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington

              Postdoctoral Research Associate                                                                          1987-89                         

                     IBM Research Division, T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights

 

Honors :

Ÿ IBM Research Division Award (1991) “For contributions to the development of a new mechanism for Si/Ge heteroepitaxy”

ŸIBM Predoctoral Fellowship (1985-87)

ŸChartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics (London), since 1999

ŸFellow of the American Physical Society, since 2003

 

Professional Activities :

ŸMember of: American Physical Society, Materials Research Society, American Chemical Society, Sigma Xi - Scientific Research Society, Institute of Physics, Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

ŸEditorial Board of : Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering, Computational Science and Engineering, SIAM Book Series, Journal of Computer Aided Materials Design, Surface Review and Letters, International Journal for Multiscale Computational Engineering, Computing in Science and Engineering

 

Organization of Scientific Meetings (Co-Organizer) :

Ÿ  International Forum on Clean Energy, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China (August 2010).

Ÿ  IC4N-2008“1st International Conference from Nanoparticles and Nanomaterials to Nanodevices and Nanosystems”, Halkidiki, Greece (June 2008).

Ÿ  Conference on“Synergy Between Experiment and Computation in Nanoscale Science”, National Nanoscale Infrastructure Network, Harvard Univ. (May 2006).

Ÿ  Focus Session on “Steps, Growth and Smoothing”, American Physical Society March Meeting, Baltimore (March 2006).

Ÿ  Focus Session on “Multiscale Simulations in Materials Science”, SIMU- European Physical Society Workshop on Bridging the Scales, Genova, Italy (August 2004).        

Ÿ  Workshop on “Multiscale Modeling and Simulation”, sponsored by ETH-Z Computational Laboratory, Lugano, Switzerland (August 2003).

Ÿ  Workshop on “Multiscale Modeling of Materials: Methods, Algorithms and Unsolved Problems”, sponsored by Centre Europeen pour le Calcul Atomique et Moleculaire (CECAM), Heraklion, Greece (July 2001).

Ÿ  Symposium on “New Advances in Materials Prediction”, Fall 1999 Meeting of the Materials Research Society, Boston.

Ÿ  Symposium on “Multiscale Modeling of Materials”, Fall 1998 Meeting of the Materials Research Society, Boston.

Ÿ  Workshop on “Multiscale Modeling and Grand Challenge Problems in Materials Research”, CECAM, Lyon, France (October 1997).

Ÿ  Workshop on “Quantitative Methods in Materials Research”, Institute of Theoretical Physics, U.C. Santa Barbara (January - June 1997).

Ÿ  Symposium on “Epitaxial Growth: Principles and Applications”, Spring 1997 Meeting of the Materials Research Society, San Francisco.

Ÿ  Symposium on “Materials Theory, Simulations and Parallel Algorithms”, Fall 1995 Meeting of the Materials Research Society, Boston.

 

Research Interests:

The research of Prof. Kaxiras encompasses computational materials and condensed matter physics, and has covered a wide range of topics; examples include: the electronic properties of crystalline and amorphous solids and their dependence on the atomic structure; the physics and chemistry of covalently bonded nano-clusters; growth and catalytic behavior of nano-structured surfaces and interfaces; the nature of electronic states in biomolecules and the function of enzymes; the microscopic origin of brittle or ductile response of solids; the physics of dislocations in metallic and covalent solids and their interaction with chemical impurities; blood flow dynamics in realistic arterial geometries, incorporating cell motion and the effect on endothelial shear stress.  A core theme is a multiscale point of view, which aims to realistically capture the behavior of complex physical systems by starting at a fundamental level, with a first-principles quantum mechanical description, and reaching to macroscopic scales.