First-Principles theory of solids: predicting and designing behaviour before its measured

Prof. Alex Zunger of the University of Colorado, Boulder research field is Condensed Matter Theory of Real Materials, involving foundational work on Density Functional Theory, Pseudopotential theory, Quantum Nanostructures, Photovoltaic materials and Materials by Design. He received his Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University; Tel Aviv Israel. He did his postdoctoral research at the Physics Dept. of Northwestern University (with Art Freeman). He then received the IBM Fellowship, which he spent at the Physics Dept. of U.C. Berkeley (with Marvin Cohen). He is the recipient of the Karl Boer Solar Medal for the year 2018, the   year 2013 Hume-Rothery Award on Theory of alloys, the 2011 (inaugural)  “Materials Theory Award”of the Materials Research Society on Inverse Design, the 2010 “Tomassoni Prize“ (Italy) and “2010 Medal of the Schola Physica Romana “ celebrating the tradition of E. Fermi, the 2001 John Bardeen award of The Material Society on “Spontaneous Ordering in semiconductor alloys”, the 2001 Rahman Award of the American Physical Society on ‘foundational development of First Principles methods’, and the 2009 Gutenberg Award (Germany) on correlated electron systems.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society; Fellow of the Materials Research Society, Sakler Fellow of the Institute of advanced studies of Tel Aviv University. ”He has been the founding Director of the $20 million ‘Center for Inverse Design’ (a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center).   The impact of Dr. Zunger’s work is partially reflected by the very high number of citations his papers have received (over 89,000, according to Google Scholar) and by his “h-number” of 135 (i.e., 135 of his papers were cited each at least 135 times).  He is the author of the fifth-most-cited paper in the 110-year history of Physical Review (out of over 350,000 articles published in that journal.