Eric Jankowski

Eric Jankowski is an Associate Professor and Director of the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering.

The overall goal of Dr. Jankowski’s work is to leverage thermodynamics for societal good. This means understanding the factors that govern molecular self-assembly, and using that knowledge to engineer materials for generating energy, storing data, or curing disease. The approach taken by Dr. Jankowski is to create and use computational tools that efficiently generate important configurations of molecules. The goal of these computational models are: (1) To provide fundamental insight into material structure when physical characterization is inadequate, and (2) To identify the most promising material candidates when there are too many choices. Consequently, one of Dr. Jankowski’s research goals is to develop new computational techniques that solve open problems in materials simulation. His educational research includes developing new curricula for scientific computation and the use storytelling to improve engineering degree programs.

Dr. Jankowski earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2012, where he developed computational tools to study the self-assembly of nanoparticles. These tools leveraged graphics processors to accelerate computations and provided insight into systems of both theoretical and practical importance. Dr. Jankowski began focusing on renewable energy generation during his postdoctoral positions at the University of Colorado and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. At these postdocs, Dr. Jankowski applied techniques he developed during his thesis to understand factors that determine the ordering of molecules in organic solar cells.