Group members
Current
![]() | Lucas Wagner Group Leader Lucas has over (at this point much more than...) a decade's experience in computing the properties of many-body quantum systems from first principles. His specialty is quantum Monte Carlo calculations, in which he has made several contributions, both in methodology and software. While he has many interests, the overarching theme of his research is using computers to study systems of electrons that fall beyond the normal paradigms of metals and insulators. |
![]() | Scott Jensen Postdoctoral Associate Scott joined the group in 2020, and is working on simulations of interacting systems to obtain accurate phase diagrams. |
![]() | William Wheeler Graduate Student William joined the group in January 2016. He is currently working on the information content of many-body wave functions, and data analysis. |
![]() | Kittithat (Mick) Krongchon Graduate Student Mick is working on automating electronic structure calculations in such a way that quantum Monte Carlo calculations can be performed more easily. He is working on van der Waals interactions in 2D systems. |
![]() | Vasilios (Billy) Passias Graduate Student Billy is working on surface states in realistic models of topological systems. |
![]() | Kevin Kleiner Graduate Student Kevin joined the group in 2019. He is interested in electron-phonon interactions and defects in correlated systems |
![]() | Chun Yu Chow Graduate Student Chun Yu joined in 2020. He is working on cuprates. |
![]() | Nirvaan Khedra Graduate Student Nirvaan joined in 2020. He is working on machine learning approaches to the many-body problem. |
![]() | Sonali Joshi Graduate Student Sonali joined in late 2020. She is working on high accuracy calculation for materials design. |
Alumni
![]() | Alexander Muñoz Graduate Student Alex joined the group in Fall 2015. His thesis was on magnetic systems and several machine learning applications. He graduated in 2023 and is moving on to a job at Los Alamos. |
![]() | Yueqing Chang Graduate Student Yueqing joined the group in fall 2016. Her thesis was on spin-orbit coupling in correlated electron systems, and learning emergent models from ab initio calculations. She graduated in 2022 and moved on to a postdoc at Rutgers. |
![]() | Shunyue Yuan Undergraduate Student Shunyue joined in 2020, and is working on measures of electronic correlation. She moved on to a graduate student position in Cal Tech. |
![]() | João Nunes Barbosa Rodrigues postdoc Joao joined in summer of 2017. He is working on effective models in graphene and descriptors for superconductivity. He is now a professor at U. ABC in Brazil. |
![]() | Shivesh Pathak Graduate Student Shivesh joined the group in 2016. He is currently working on enhancing QWalk's capabilities. He graduated in 2021 and is currently at Sandia National Lab. |
![]() | Kiel Williams Graduate Student Kiel is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow who is learning how to improve many-body wave functions in realistic systems. He joined the group in summer of 2013, and graduated in 2020. He now works for a data analytics company. |
![]() | Awadhesh Narayan Postdoc Awadhesh got his PhD from Trinity College Dublin, where he studied the transport of spins in materials. His interest in this group was the prediction of new strongly correlated materials that may have quite unusual properties. After a productive stint in the group, he has moved to ETH-Zurich to work with Nicola Spaldin. |
![]() | Hitesh Changlani Postdoc Hitesh hails from Cornell and specializes in many-body quantum methods, mostly as applied to model lattice systems. His work in this group has focused on formalizing the link between the high energy (for condensed matter) physics of electrons and the low-energy qualitative descriptions that we use to talk about materials. Hitesh is a prolific collaborator and also worked with Shinsei Ryu, Taylor Hughes, Bryan Clark, and David Ceperley in the physics department at UIUC. He is now professor at Florida State. |
![]() | Huihuo Zheng Graduate Student Huihuo has many interests, including correlated metal-insulator transitions, new methods for quantum Monte Carlo, and effective Hamiltonians. He joined the group in spring of 2012 and graduated in 2016. He is now a postdoc at Argonne National Lab. |
![]() | Li Chen Graduate Student Li studied correlated metal-insulator transitions in realistic systems. She joined the group in summer of 2014. She is currently working at Goldman Sachs. |
![]() | Yanbin Wu Associated Graduate Student Yanbin is a student of Narayan Aluru who is working with the group on calculating the interaction of water with 2D materials. He graduated in 2016 and is currently living in Houston. |
![]() | Brian Busemeyer Graduate Student Brian is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow who is using quantum Monte Carlo methods to study superconducting materials. He joined the group in August 2013 and graduated in 2018. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Flatiron Institute. |
![]() | Olabode Sule Associated Graduate Student Bode was a student of Shinsei Ryu who was implementing spin-orbit interactions in QWalk. |
![]() | Jack Meister Undergraduate student Jack did his senior thesis on visualizing correlations in electronic systems. |
![]() | Daniel Jiang Undergraduate student Daniel did some work on extending the averaging programs for QWalk. |
![]() | Martin Graham Undergraduate student Martin did his senior thesis on improving the time step error in diffusion Monte Carlo. |
![]() | Matt Ho Undergraduate Student Matt is working on data-mining approaches to understanding trends in correlated electron materials. |
![]() | Ping-Ko Cho Undergraduate Student Ping-Ko worked on faster implementations of QMC techniques |
![]() | Jeremy Morales Associated Graduate Student Jeremy was a student of Peter Abbamonte who studied magnetic models for unconventional superconductors. |
![]() | Cooper Lorsung Undergraduate student Cooper is benchmarking different techniques for computing thermodynamic quantities from first principles. |
![]() | Yiqing Zhou Undergraduate student Yiqing worked on implementing and improving algorithms in pyqmc in 2019-2020. |
![]() | Sohm Apte Undergraduate student Sohm worked on implementing Jastrow factors in pyqmc in 2019. |