Graduate Student Seminar

January 17, 2025

10:00 a.m. ET

McConomy Auditorium, First Floor Cohon University Center

Teaching Machines to Solve Global Challenges, One Atom at a Time 

In recent years, challenges associated with supply chains and the need for more efficient and sustainable materials and devices for energy, power, and other critical applications is acute. Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomy, especially in their ability to augment materials discovery and manufacturing, have provided a foundation for developing solutions that can respond to these global challenges. This talk discusses recent work combining hardware and software solutions to develop autonomous, multiscale platforms integrating discovery, synthesis, and characterization of materials, targeting sustainability and reduction in critical elements. Enabling decision-making in real time is of paramount importance in the quest for developing labs or instruments that can manipulate materials at the pace of discovery through intelligent operation. Advancements toward this goal and challenges that persist will be reviewed.

Mitra TaheriMitra Taheri
Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, Johns Hopkins University (JHU)
Chief Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

At JHU, Taheri also serves as the Director of the Materials Characterization and Processing Center (MCP), is a member of the leadership council in the Ralph O’Conner Sustainable Energy Institute, a Fellow of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute and member of the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, and leads the “Dynamic Characterization Group.” Taheri’s research focuses on the development and use of in situ microscopy and spectroscopy to characterize evolution and properties of materials and structures in a variety of extreme environments (from aerospace to biomedical) and external stimuli. Her recent work has focused on developing artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to tackle high throughput and autonomous materials synthesis, processing, and characterization. She received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in MSE from Carnegie Mellon University, followed by an NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Naval Research Laboratory and a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. She spent 11 years at Drexel University as the Hoeganaes Endowed Chair Professor of Metallurgy before joining the faculty at JHU.

Upcoming Events