Principal Investigator
Dr. Peichen Zhong
zhongpc[AT]nus.edu.sg
Peichen grew up in Sichuan (the birthplace of pandas with a lot of spicy food). He received a BS in Physics from USTC (2018) and a PhD in Materials Science from UC Berkeley (2023), advised by Prof. Gerbrand Ceder. He then completed the postdoctoral work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), co-advised by Profs. Kristin A. Persson, Bingqing Cheng and Aditi Krishnapriyan. He joined NUS MSE as an Assistant Professor under the Presidential Young Professorship from July 2025. He enjoys traveling, hot pot, and writing with LaTeX. [LinkedIn, Google Scholar]
Research Fellows
Dr. Junmin Chen
PhD in Materials Science, Tsinghua University
Junmin will be joining the group as a postdoctoral research fellow from October 2025. [LinkedIn]
Dr. Zihan Zhang
PhD in Physics, Jilin University
Zihan will be joining the group as a postdoctoral research fellow from October 2025. His research interests include condensed matter physics and the design of materials using structure search methods. He has worked on superconducting hydrides, 2D materials, and super-hard materials. He has a strong knowledge of superconductivity theory. He enjoys physics, Chinese classical literature, and animation. [Google Scholar]
Timothy D. Pook
Research Engineer at NUS
Tim is current a research engineer in MSE department, managing and maintaining the HPC cluster and other computational resources. He enjoys martial arts, currently training Jiu-Jitsu and Judo.
Graduate Students
Yicheng Chen
PhD student (2025-), BS/MS from Fudan University
Yicheng is a PhD student with a background in quantum chemistry and machine learning. He previously worked on using graph neural networks to predict molecular and material properties and was a research intern at Microsoft AI4Science (2024). Now, he is exploring how ML can be used in electrochemical and energy storage systems. Outside of research, he enjoys playing video games - especially RPGs.
Xintian Wang (Wendy)
PhD student (2026-), BS/MS from Oxford University
Wendy will be joining the group as a PhD student from Spring 2026. At Oxford, she developed a strong interest in molecular dynamics simulations of solid-state electrolyte materials. She has also worked on projects in batteries and electrocatalysis. She is interested in applying machine learning potentials to explore the properties of energy materials. Outside of research, she enjoys playing the guzheng and travelling. Wendy is now a research intern at the AI for Science Institute.
Visiting Scholars
Yubai Shi
Visiting PhD student from UCAS (2025-2026)
Yubai is a PhD candidate at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS). He is interested in ferroelectrics, and he prefers using computational methods to investigate the real microscopic physical process and properties of matter, such as machine learning assisted molecular dynamics. In his spare time, he is pursuing his goal of becoming a bodybuilder. He is not only inspired by the most novel and interesting research findings in the lab, but also motivated by the larger muscles in the gym!
Izumi Takahara
Visiting PhD student from UTokyo (2025)
Izumi is a PhD student at the University of Tokyo, conducting research on materials design with generative AI. Her work focuses on applying techniques such as large language models and diffusion models to materials science in order to develop AI systems capable of autonomously and flexibly exploring new materials. By effectively integrating materials modeling with generative AI, she aims to accelerate materials development.