General Motors (GM) and Brown University have reached a $1.25 million agreement to continue the GM/Brown Collaborative Research Laboratory on Computational Materials Science, for five years. The laboratory was founded in 2001 by GM to accelerate the pace of innovation in strategic technology areas. Since its inception, it has received over $8.2 million.
The goal of the laboratory is to use a combination of computer simulations and experiments to develop and assess new materials that could lead to low-cost, high-performance and environmentally friendly components for vehicles. Notable recent achievements of the laboratory include computer-aided design of aluminum alloys and steels with improved strength and fracture resistance, and the development of novel Silicon Oxide materials with enhanced performance as battery electrodes.
Over the next five years, the laboratory will focus on developing ways to predict the fracture resistance of vehicle body structures, and will continue to develop battery materials with improved charge capacity and life for electric vehicles.
At Brown, the lab is led by Brian Sheldon (co-director), and includes Yue Qi and Vikas Srivastava. The team will also include two postdoctoral research associates and two graduate students.
At GM, the staff includes Mark Verbrugge (co-director) along with Anil Sachdev, Andrew Bobel, and Xingcheng Xiao.
Since 2001, 13 faculty members and over 30 postdoctoral research associates and graduate students from Brown’s School of Engineering have participated in the laboratory, together with more than 10 staff members from GM.
