Simon Billinge Mentors Student-Led Team That Wins $60,000 Google Research Award
Project will improve computational capabilities for researchers in East Africa through a local organization that trains PhD students in materials science
Student leaders of JUAMI-OCF, an initiative to find advanced, sustainable energy solutions for sub-Saharan African countries
Simon Billinge, professor of materials science and applied physics and applied mathematics, jointly mentored a student-led team—with Columbia University undergraduate researcher Jaylyn C. Umana— that received a $60,000 Google Research Award for Inclusion Research Program grant. Their award-winning proposal is aimed at connecting African scientists to state-of-the-art computing tools for materials discovery and innovation on the free-to-access Google cloud platform through the Joint Undertaking for an African Materials Institute–Open Computing Facility (JUAMI-OCF).
Many African nations fall into the category of high to extreme risk on the Climate Change Vulnerability Index, and research efforts are generally carried out outside of sub-Saharan Africa. JUAMI-OCF is focused on finding advanced, sustainable, stable, and equitable energy solutions for sub-Saharan African countries that need reliable access to energy to improve and sustain their quality of life. The goal is to build technological innovations in energy and sustainability that will be implemented in local communities, driven by African researchers and institutions.
Our hope is that this project will enable high-impact computational materials and sustainability research. In the long term, we hope to establish a computational materials science and sustainability program covering all of East Africa.
Simon Billinge, professor of materials science and applied physics and applied mathematics
Billinge’s team is centered on the co-development between researchers in East Africa and the United States of accessible Density Function Theory (DFT) capabilities, an important tool allowing materials researchers to understand and explore material properties. DFT requires significant computational resources and expertise that are not universally available, especially in Africa.
“Our hope is that this project will enable high-impact computational materials and sustainability research,” Billinge said. “We plan to build accessible onboarding tools for complex DFT calculations, hold educational workshops on the use of this tool, and foster a collaborative US and East African community of DFT users. And, in the long term, we hope to establish a computational materials science and sustainability program covering all of East Africa.”