Jeffrey C. Grossman

Dr. Jeffrey C. Grossman is Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned his B.A. in Physics from Johns Hopkins University and his M.S. in Physics and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining MIT, Professor Grossman founded and headed the Computational Nanoscience research group at the University of California, Berkeley, which focused on designing new materials for energy applications. At MIT, he heads a research group devoted to understanding, predicting, and designing novel materials with applications in energy conversion, energy storage, and thermal transport. As a Lawrence Fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he received the Physics Directorate Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Award. He was also awarded a coveted Sloan Fellowship soon after joining MIT. Professor Grossman's current research centers on the development of new solar thermal fuels, the design of nano-scale technologies for sequencing DNA in hours, three-dimensional photovoltaic panels, new materials to convert waste heat into electricity, and more. He has also developed entirely new ways to encourage idea generation and creativity in interdisciplinary science, including 'speedstorming,' a method of pair-wise idea generation that works similarly to a round-robin 'speed-dating' technique.