Krishna Rajan is the SUNY Distinguished Professor and Erich Bloch Chair of the Department of Materials Design and Innovation (MDI) at the University at Buffalo (UB); with a joint appointment as Chief Scientist in the Energy Processes and Materials Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He has pioneered the field of Materials Informatics and data driven discovery in materials science and engineering and its impact on characterization, processing, and modeling of materials. A UB faculty member since 2015, he was recruited to establish MDI as the first materials science department built on the foundations of integrating materials science with information science.

Dr. Rajan received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto in Metallurgy & Materials Science, and a doctorate from MIT in Materials Science minoring in science and technology policy followed by a postdoctoral appointment at Cambridge University. He was a staff scientist at the National Research Council of Canada and  held faculty positions at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Iowa State University before coming to UB.  He has received numerous recognitions including the Alexander von Humboldt Award from Germany, the CSIRO- Australia Distinguished Visiting Scientist Award, the CNRS Visiting Professorship from France and the Presidential Lecture Award from the National Institute of Materials Science, Japan.

Materials Informatics: From Molecules To Neighborhoods

Materials Informatics involving the judicious use of AI can be used to create a paradigm for a safer and sustainable society. Meeting both sustainability and performance goals at the outset of materials discovery requires a comprehensive understanding of the multiscale impact of molecular scale chemistry. In this presentation we describe how AI driven methods can help bridge multiscale information in materials engineering from molecular/crystal structure through to engineering performance. This lays the foundation for a benign-by-design, scientific framework for materials development, that unifies advances in technology in harmony with societal health and safety.