Research Expertise and Interest

energy storage, computational modeling, machine learning, autonomous laboratories

Research Description

The Computational and Experimental Design of Emerging materials Research group (CEDER) is a part of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley and the Materials Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Their goal is to better design high quality functional materials by mapping the relationship between materials structures and their physical and chemical properties through a combined theoretical and experimental approach. Their group integrates all the aspects of materials research from developing the fundamental understanding to the design, synthesis and testing of new bulk and nano materials. They combine computational approaches in quantum mechanics, solid state physics and statistical mechanics, with selected experiments and robotics into a complimentary research strategy to investigate materials in the energy field. They are one of the premier groups in high-throughput computing and the Materials Genome and contribute extensively to the Materials Project.  More recently, they have built an AI-driven autonomous laboratory for the synthesis and characterization of materials.  

Applied areas of interest are in energy storage based on Li, Na, and multi-valent ion intercalation, solid-state batteries, and other functional materials. On the fundamental side, the group develops expertise in electronic structure, ab-initio thermodynamics, diffusion, synthesis science, structure prediction, and machine learning Over the last decade, we have successfully performed many research projects supported by various companies and governments. The CEDER group offers research opportunities for students interested in theoretical, computational, or experimental work or a combination of these.