Santanu Chaudhuri
Santanu Chaudhuri, has been appointed director of the lab’s new Manufacturing Science and Engineering initiative, effective September 7, 2017. In this role, Chaudhuri oversees Argonne’s Manufacturing Science program that develops capabilities to use high-performance computing-based mesoscale simulation tools to accelerate materials to manufacturing.
Jeffrey L. Binder, associate laboratory director for energy and global security at Argonne, commented that “Santanu brings a wealth of knowledge and talent for developing new scientific approaches to this emerging technology area. I look forward to working with him as he expands Argonne’s role in helping industries apply the latest scientific discoveries to our materials manufacturing processes that will enhance the nation’s global manufacturing competitiveness.”
Chaudhuri and his team members will continue to develop HPC-compatible physics-based multiscale simulation and materials design tools that are aimed at accelerating materials to manufacturing transitions. They have been extensively funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Energy and industry leaders. These new capabilities, combined with the computing capabilities at the lab, will help Argonne’s manufacturing initiative to bridge the divide between fundamental and applied research. An application-oriented approach with strong connection to matured computational tools will be able to attract new partners and build a sustainable ecosystem for innovations.
Chaudhuri earned his Ph.D. in materials chemistry and chemical physics from SUNY Stony Brook in 2003. As a graduate student, he received a NATO scholarship to work at Oxford University developing simulation methods for ionic conductors, catalysts and battery materials. From 2003–2006, Chaudhuri worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials on theory-guided design of hydrogen storage materials for automobile applications. Subsequently, he joined Washington State University, where he led the development of Applied Sciences efforts and served as an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2014, Chaudhuri moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and established the Accelerated Materials Research program as part of the Applied Research Institute.
Prior to joining Argonne, Chaudhuri served as the associate director of the Applied Research Institute (ARI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), responsible for engineering design and simulations. His research group worked on applications of high-performance computing in energy, environment and manufacturing applications for improving efficiency of materials insertion and deployment. He maintains a joint appointment as a professor in the Civil and Materials Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago.