Winning paper to be showcased in Special Collection of top applied physics research by early career investigators
MELVILLE, N.Y., March 25, 2024 — The Journal of Applied Physics (JAP) is pleased to confer the inaugural Best Paper Award on Mitchell Wood Ph.D., a Principal Member of the Technical Staff in the Center for Computing Research at Sandia National Labs.
Dr. Wood’s research winning article, “Elucidating size effects on the yield strength of single-crystal Cu via the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability,” will be featured in a Special Collection highlighting the top 2022 publications of early-career principal investigators within 10 years of receiving their doctorates. The 52 articles in the collection were chosen from 209 qualifying papers in all areas of applied physics research by a Selection Committee of journal Editors and Editorial Advisory Board Members, including André Anders, Prasanna Balachandran, Rachel Goldman, Lydia Kisley, Laurie McNeil, Christos Panagopoulos, Jochen Schneider, Jian Shi, Kaikai Xu, and Houlong Zhang.
The award comes with an appointment to the journal’s editorial advisory board, as well as an invitation to serve on the following year’s Early Career Investigator Selection Committee.
Dr. Wood said, “I am honored to be selected for this prestigious award, which offers an excellent opportunity for early career researchers like me to improve scientific communication from the other side of the publications exchange. I take pride in my role as an author and peer reviewer as scientific publishing is how we all learn from each other at the frontiers of science.”
Dr. Wood’s winning paper studies the limiting behavior of a simple metal under strong compression and tensile stresses, modeling approximations to view the compressed solid as a viscous liquid, and where a shock wave arrives at a discontinuity in density (such as a surface) and develops the classic Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability (RMI). To examine the dynamic properties, behaviors, and phases of materials in response to thermodynamic stimuli in varying environments and stages, he performs multiscale modeling of matter in extreme conditions, utilizing machine learning in predictive simulations. “Studies of dynamic properties of materials strive to unravel physical problems that don’t benefit from a clear separation of critical length and timescales. This means that problems are complex because there are multiple or competing mechanisms for the global response of the material to a given stimuli. Some of my high-level goals are to uncover phase diagrams and constituent behavior of materials that are dependent on temperature, pressure, chemical potential as well as time dependence of each of these thermodynamic quantities,” he explained.
At Sandia National Labs in the Center for Computing Research since 2016, Dr. Wood currently leads multiple research efforts focused on multiscale modeling and has contributed on wide ranging topics from high-pressure phase transitions, data-driven design of alloys, plasma facing materials, and the development of constitutive models for shock hydrodynamic codes. He holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Purdue University, a B.S. in Physics from Michigan State University. He is a recipient of the Neil Ashcroft Early Career Award from the American Physical Society and is an active developer of the open source LAMMPS and FitSNAP software projects.
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