Prof. Markus J Buehler

Professor Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT (an Institute-wide Endowed Chair), a member of the Center for Materials Science and Engineering, and the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at the Schwarzman College of Computing. He holds academic appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Research focus is on developing a new paradigm that designs materials from the molecular scale. This requires the combinantion of multi-scale modeling, additive manufacturing, 3D printing, and experimental synthesis, which is applied to bio-inspired materials, biological materials, nanomaterials, and biomass materials, just to mention a few. By utilizing a computational materials science approach that includes Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations, Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations, coarse-grained and finite element modeling, as well as emerging methods based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), we are able to understand and design materials along all different length scales, from a fundamental level.

This is combined with additive manufacturing and synthesis techniques to provide a complete framework for materials design and production. By incorporating concepts from structural engineering, materials science and biology our lab's research has identified the core principles that link the fundamental atomistic-scale chemical structures to functional scales by understanding how biological materials achieve superior mechanical properties through the formation of hierarchical structures, via a merger of the concepts of structure and material.