"While I wanted to be useful, I kept being drawn to these fundamental questions of how knowing where the atoms and electrons were located explained the world around us,Ultimately, I obtained my PhD in computational materials science to become a scientist who works with electrons every day for that reason. Since what I do hardly ever feels like a chore, I now have a greater appreciation for the fact that this path allowed me to ‘not have a real job.’”"
Heather J. Kulik is an American computational materials scientist and engineer who is the Lammot Du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research considers the computational design of new materials and the use of artificial intelligence to predict material properties.
"I reflect on what I’ve been doing at work as well as what my priorities might be both in life and in work in the upcoming year, This helps to inform any decisions I make about how to prioritize my time and efforts each year and helps me to make sure I’ve put everything in perspective."
"Thanks to both machine-learning models and heterogeneous computing that has accelerated first-principles modeling, we are now able to start asking and answering questions that we could never have addressed before"
"We can each see and learn from different problem-solving strategies others in the group have tried and help each other out along the way.”"
"All of our research is dedicated toward the same practical goal,Namely, we aim to be able to predict and understand using computational tools why catalysts or materials behave the way they do so that we can overcome limitations in present understanding or existing materials"
"Once you realize the sheer scale of how many materials we could or should be studying to solve outstanding problems, you realize the only way to make a dent is to do things at a larger and faster scale that has ever been done before,”"