Citizenship United States Education Tsinghua University | Fields Materials science Known for molecular modelling | |
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Institutions California Institute of Technology,
General Motors Research Laboratories,
Michigan State University Notable awards Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology | ||
Yue qi
Yue Qi is a computational materials scientist at Michigan State University. She won the 1999 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for Theory along with William Goddard and Tahir Cagin for "work in modeling the operation of molecular machine designs."
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Education and career
Qi graduated from Tsinghua University with a double B.S. in materials science and computer science in 1996. As a graduate student in William Goddard's laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, she worked on molecular modelling, including in nanowires and binary liquid metals. She earned her Ph.D. in materials science in 2001. Her dissertation was entitled "Molecular dynamics (MD) studies on phase transformation and deformation behaviors in FCC metals and alloys."
In 2001 she became a research scientist at General Motors Research and Development, where she was recognized for work in interfacial tribology and multiscale modeling of aluminum plasticity. Her research focused on using computational analysis of grain boundaries to improve the strength and flexibility of aluminum panels, as well as energy applications such as modelling proton exchange membranes in fuel cells, and studying lithium-ion batteries. Qi had previously completed an internship at General Motors as a graduate student, and joined the company right after graduating. She said that she was one of the few people in General Motors with a physics rather than an engineering background. Beginning in 2009, she also taught classes at the University of Windsor.
In 2013, she joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Michigan State University. Her research program focuses on materials simulation for clean energy, including density functional theory studies of diffusion, and the effects of mechanical deformation, in lithium-ion batteries. During this time she also became vice chair of the Michigan chapter of the American Vacuum Society.