Dr. Rachel Kurchin

Biography

Rachel Kurchin is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She specializes in computational materials science, focusing on electronic structure theory, data science, and energy device modeling to address climate challenges. Kurchin actively contributes to the development of various scientific codes and serves as an editor for the Journal of Open Source Software. She received a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Yale University in 2013, followed by a Master of Philosophy in Materials Science and Metallurgy from the University of Cambridge in 2014, supported by the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Kurchin completed her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019, aided by a Blue Waters Graduate Fellowship. From 2019 to 2022, she conducted postdoctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University, benefiting from fellowships at the Molecular Sciences Software Institute. In fall 2022, she joined the faculty, contributing to the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute. In 2024, she was selected to participate in the inaugural class of Molecular Sciences Software Institute Faculty Fellows and received the Scientific Software Research Faculty Award from the Simons Foundation.

Research Interests

Experience

Awards