Alex Zunger

Alex Zunger is a theoretical physicist and research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, known for methods in the quantum theory of solids.

born 2000First-principles pseudopotentialsSpecial quasirandom structuresThe inverse band structure problem

Occupation: physicist, university teacher, researcher
Education: Tel Aviv University

Alex Zunger was born in 2000

Zunger earned his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He did postdoctoral work at Northwestern University with Arthur J. Freeman. As an IBM Fellow, he also worked with Marvin L. Cohen at the University of California, Berkeley.

His field is the condensed matter theory of real materials. He developed pseudopotentials for first-principles calculations in 1977 and, with John Perdew, an exchange and correlation energy functional in 1981. In 1990, he and colleagues proposed the special quasirandom structures approach for disordered solids.

In 1978 he founded the Solid-State Theory Group at NREL and led it until 2011. With Franceschetti, he first proposed the inverse band structure problem in 1999. He was the first director of the DOE Center for Inverse Design and trained 77 postdoctoral fellows.

In 2011 he moved to the University of Colorado, where he works at the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Milestones in Alex Zunger's life

1977
Developed pseudopotentials for first-principles electronic structure calculations.
1978
Founded the Solid-State Theory Group at NREL.
1981
Co-developed an exchange and correlation energy functional with John Perdew.
1990
Proposed the special quasirandom structures approach with colleagues.
1999
Proposed the inverse band structure problem with Franceschetti.
2001
Received the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics.
2009
Received the Gutenberg Research Award.
2011
Received the first Materials Theory Award and moved to the University of Colorado.