Rachel Kurchin
Assistant Research Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
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.