Rodrigo Freitas

Research

Rodrigo Freitas received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics from the University of Campinas in Brazil, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California Berkeley. During his Ph.D. he was also a Livermore Graduate Scholar in the Materials Science Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. As a graduate student, Dr. Freitas investigated the thermodynamics, kinetics, and mechanics of extended defects in metals (such as grain boundaries and dislocations) using atomistic simulation methods, i.e., methods in which the behavior of each atom is explicitly considered. When a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, he worked to leverage Machine Learning tools to perform physics-based modeling of materials kinetics.

In January 2021, Dr. Freitas joined DMSE as Assistant Professor, with a research focus on elucidating the fundamental mechanisms of microstructural evolution for systems of relevance in materials science broadly construed. His research group employs a range of computational techniques with the goal of bridging the gap between the all-atom information gathered from simulations and the mesoscale description of microstructural elements employed in materials science.