Jan Andzelm

USA

Topic:
“Molecular modeling of polymeric materials”

Dr. Jan Andzelm is a team leader at the Polymers Branch of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) focusing on modeling of macromolecules and composite materials for Soldier protection. The protective systems often use polymer composites due to their low weight, good strength and toughness which improves resistance to ballistic penetration. The team is developing and applying novel computational techniques at quantum mechanical, atomistic and mesoscale levels aimed at understanding and predicting structural, mechanical, thermal and electronic properties of macromolecules and composite materials. These materials are often subjected to extreme conditions of high strain rates, pressure and temperature.
During the last 10 years our team has received several Army Achievement Awards for Technical Excellence. Dr. Andzelm is an ARL elected Fellow and his research, including his earlier work on DFT methodology for chemistry, attracted more than 11,000 citations so far with h-index of 41.
Most recently the team has focused on fundamental investigation of semicrystalline polymers for high performance fibers, thermoset polymer networks in composites, responsive polymers and also emerging 2D polymers for protective shields. We are also interested in materials informatics and inverse design approaches that have the potential to predict a priori the performance of macromolecular systems.