Asta Research Group – Computational Materials Science

Ordering in High Entropy Alloys

How the local moments of Cr atoms influence bulk mechanical properties of advanced alloys

Chromium Solvation in Molten Floride Salts

Understanding how to mitigate corrosion in metal/molten-salt systems using ab-initio molecular dyanamics

High-Throughput Atomistic Calculations

Developing tools for materials discovery using machine learning and data science

Microstructural Effects in Dealloying

Predicting how metals evolve in nuclear reactors

Welcome to the Asta Group

We leverage state-of-the-art computational techniques and resources to study advanced materials for the next generation of engineering technologies. Our current research area focuses include advanced structural alloys, functional semiconductors, Generation IV nuclear reactor materials, and code development. We are located in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Recent News

January 2024

Pedro’s work examining the role of group IV and V elements in stabilizing the BCC structure in high entropy alloys is published in Acta Materialia.
December 2023

Enze graduates with his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering and will start as a Lecturer at Stanford University in the new year!
September 2023

Wenqing passes the qualifying exam to advance to Ph.D. candidacy!

Anas publishes an assessment of using a mean-field concentration wave model to predict ordering/clustering in concentrated alloys in Acta Materialia.
August 2023

Yuan passes the preliminary exam – congratulations, Yuan!

Shivani’s ab-initio study of oxygen vacancy properties in magnetite iron oxide is published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
July 2023

The group says farewell to David Olmsted who retires after many years as a Staff Scientist with the Asta group.

Nathan’s phase field model for grain boundary dealloying corrosion is published in npj Computational Materials.

Flynn and Anas publish their perspectives on the observations of short-range ordering in “high-entropy” alloys in MRS Bulletin.

Flynn comments on interpretation of electron diffraction patterns towards characterizing short-range ordering in alloys in Nature Materials.
June 2023

Read about our recent works on metal/molten salt interfaces in this EFRC Newsletter article written by Andrea!
May 2023

Madelyn and Nathan pass their qualifying exams and advance to Ph.D. candidacy!

Anas graduates with his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering and begins work as an NRC Postdoctoral Fellow at NIST.

Flynn graduates with his Ph.D. in Applied Science and Technology and begins work at Lawrence Livermore National Lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow.

Bella graduates with a B.S. in Materials Science in Engineering and will begin graduate school at Stanford.

Danny and Shivani publish their work on benchmarking high-throughput point defect calculations in npj Computational Materials.

Shivani and Mark’s co-authored work on charged point defect thermodynamics and kinetics in hematite iron oxide Electronic Structure.
March 2023

The group welcomes Zhao Fan as a new Postdoctoral Researcher, co-advised by Michael Whittaker and Piotr Pawel Zarzycki.

Nick graduates with his Ph.D. and begins work at Apple as an Applied Scientist.

Enze receives the Materials Science and Engineering Graduate Student and Inclusion Award for 2022-2023!
February 2023

Sheng and Mark’s coauthored work on grain boundary “wormhole” corrosion in metals by molten salts is published in Nature Communications.

More News…