Kristin A. Persson

Materials scientist Kristin Persson is the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley and a Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She uses atomistic and first-principles computational methods coupled with high-performance computing technology and machine learning to advance materials for clean energy production and storage.

She is the founder and director of the Materials Project which is a multi-national effort to compute the properties of all inorganic materials and provide the data and associated analysis algorithms free of charge. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to drastically reduce the time needed to invent new materials to serve societal needs, in particular advancing clean energy solutions. Within her research group, they leverage the software and data infrastructure of the Materials Project together with expertise in materials informatics to study the physics and chemistry of materials particularly for energy production and storage applications. Current focus areas include design of novel photocatalysts, multi-valent battery electrode materials, Li-ion battery electrode materials, polar materials and liquid electrolytes for Li energy storage solutions and beyond.

In addition to her membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, she is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. She mentors students and researchers in computational materials science, chemistry, data science, and sustainable energy.