Hillert Materials Modeling Colloquium series VI: The past and future evolution of materials research

Risto Nieminen’s research area is condensed-matter and materials physics, especially theoretical and computational methods as applied to multiscale materials modelling. He has developed widely used methods and applied them in interpreting a variety of experimental results for e.g. atomic-scale defects, surfaces and interfaces of solids and for nanoscale structures and assemblies. An important application area has been defects and doping in semiconductors and two-dimensional materials. The research has contributed to the understanding of carrier concentration and compensation, defect metastability, doping limits, diffusivity and complex formation. The work includes wide-gap and insulating materials, nitrides, complex oxides, perovskites, and chalcopyrites, as well as graphene and related materials. Large-scale computation can also be combined with extensive databases and machine-learning methods to systematically search and discover new materials.

Lecturer

Risto Nieminen is Distinguished Professor of Physics (emeritus) at Aalto University and its former Dean of Science. He studied at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) and in Cambridge University, and was postdoc at NORDITA, Copenhagen. Nieminenhas been associate professor at Jyväskylä University, Finland and visiting professor at Cornell University, USA, before joining Aalto in 1987. He served as the scientific director of the Center for Scientific Computing (CSC) in 1989-96. He was the founder and director (2000-2013) of COMP, the Finnish Center for Excellence for Computational Nanoscience at Aalto. He is former chairman of the Psi-k European Network for electronic-structure calculations. Nieminenis honorary chairman of the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Fellow of American Physical Society and Institute of Physics (UK). He was granted the title of Academician of Science in 2014, and is President of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Nieminenis the founding editor of two research journals, Computational Materials Science and Electronic Structure.

Hillert Materials Modeling Colloquium Series is arranged by Hillert Modeling Laboratory
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Spokesperson