Research Bio

The Asta Group is engaged in a variety of diverse projects in the world of computational materials science.  They participate in many other active, ongoing projects collaboration with scientists from around the world.

Mark Asta received his PhD in an interdisciplinary Materials Physics program from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. He subsequently joined Sandia National Laboratories at Livermore, CA, as a postdoctoral researcher and then as a senior member of technical staff beginning in 1995. He joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, as an Associate Professor in 2000. In 2005 he joined the University of California, Davis, as a full Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, where he served as vice-chair from 2008-2009. In 2010 he joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Department Chair from July, 2015 – January, 2018, and where in 2015 he was named the Arthur C. and Phyllis G. Oppenheimer Professor in Advanced Materials Analysis.  Professor Asta is also a member of the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he has been a Faculty Scientist since 2010, and Division Director since January, 2018.

Research Expertise and Interest

computational materials science