Directory

Rachel Kurchin is a computational materials scientist who uses electronic structure theory, data science, and energy device modeling to fight the climate crisis. She is an active contributor to and developer of a variety of scientific codes, and serves as an editor of the Journal of Open Source Software. Prior to joining CMU's Materials Science and Engineering faculty in Fall 2022, she received her B.S, in Physics (Intensive) from Yale in 2013, M.Phil. in Materials Science and Metallurgy from Cambridge in 2014 (supported by a Gates Cambridge Scholarship), and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT in 2019 (supported by a Blue Waters Graduate Fellowship), where she was advised by Tonio Buonassisi. From 2019-2022, she conducted postdoctoral research at CMU with Venkat Viswanathan, supported by fellowships from CMU's Manufacturing Futures Initiative and the Molecular Sciences Software Institute.

Education

2019 Ph.D. Materials Science and Engineering, MIT

2014 M.Phil. Materials Science and Metallurgy, Cambridge

2013 B.S. Physics, Yale

Media mentions


Materials Science and Engineering

New MSE faculty member combats climate crisis between triathlon training

Rachel Kurchin, assistant research professor, joins MSE from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at CMU where she was a postdoctoral researcher.