Qiang Zhu (Physics and Astronomy) has been honored by the National Science Foundation with a Faculty Early Career Development Program for his proposal "Organic Materials Discovery with the Aid of Digital Crystallography". This CAREER award will support theoretical and computational research and educational activities to advance the understanding of organic materials. Currently, systematic predictive models for developing new organic materials with targeted physical properties are largely missing, due to the fact that molecules can be packed in an enormous number of ways in the three-dimensional space. In this five-years project, Zhu and his team will develop a new computational scheme that allows more efficient discovery of organic materials based on modern crystallography. In addition, this CAREER award also provides support for education and outreach activities that are centered on promoting open-source software development.

Zhu joined UNLV in 2016. His research group at UNLV works on computational materials discovery and open-source code development.