Skip to main content

Volker Blum

Rooney Family Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Research Interests


Computational predictions and understanding of new materials related to energy and electronics, as well as molecular structure and spectroscopies, based on the "first principles" of quantum mechanics. Much of this work is directly connected to ongoing developments of new algorithms and computational tools in the all-electron electronic structure package "FHI-aims" and in the broader “ELSI” infrastructure, both led by Volker Blum.

Selected Grants


DMREF: Collaborative Research: Hybrid Materials for Superfluorescent Quantum Emitters

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2023 - 2027

Design and Validation of Defect-Resistant Multinary Chalcogenide Semiconductors for Energy Conversion

ResearchCo-Principal Investigator · Awarded by Department of Energy · 2019 - 2025

Springer Materials semiconductor data for the digital world

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Springer-Verlag GmbH · 2021 - 2024

Support for Scientific Software Development for Electronic Structure Theory

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Molecular Simulations from First Principles · 2021 - 2024

Collaborative Research: SI2-SSI: ELSI-Infrastructure for Scalable Electronic Structure Theory

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2015 - 2022

REU Site for Meeting the Grand Challenges in Engineering

Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2017 - 2022

Implicit solvation approach for molecular systems

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Avant-garde Materials Simulation (Deutschland) GmbH · 2021 - 2022

Extending the ELSI infrastructure for large-scale electronic structure calculations on GPU-accelerated HPC resources

FellowshipPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Molecular Sciences Software Institute · 2019 - 2020

GOALI: Doping Control and Processes in Metal Halide Perovskites

ResearchCo-Principal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2017 - 2020

GAANN - Department of Chemistry

Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by Department of Education · 2015 - 2019

Defect Engineering in Zinc-Blende-Type Absorbers

ResearchCo-Principal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2015 - 2019

Coupling the Dynamics of Molecules and Spins in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for Imaging and Oil Borehole Applications

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by American Chemical Society · 2015 - 2017

Integration of FHI-aims and ATK Software for Computational Materials Science

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Atherton Quantum Insight, LLC · 2014 - 2014

External Relationships


  • Elsevier
  • Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, Germany
  • MS1P e.V.

This faculty member (or a member of their immediate family) has reported outside activities with the companies, institutions, or organizations listed above. This information is available to institutional leadership and, when appropriate, management plans are in place to address potential conflicts of interest.