Developing novel engineering materials is crucial in safeguarding a sustainable future, such as reusable shock absorbers and catalysts, and this from the atomic scale upwards. Computational material design plays a vital role herein. These models can predict how modifying materials impacts their macroscopic functionality in a fraction of the time needed to synthesise the materials experimentally. To facilitate this goal, Sven’s research aims to develop computational methods to fully characterise nanostructured materials and quantify how even atomic-level modifications can fundamentally impact the macroscopic material behaviour. This field is in full development, supported by the rise in computational power, and recently led to fundamentally new techniques to enable in silico material design, such as strain field engineering and the micromechanical model.
Sven’s research covers both fundamental method development and more practical-oriented applications, adopting spectroscopy as a tool to bridge these areas. Tackling these research questions requires integrating interdisciplinary knowledge from statistical physics, quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, and thermodynamics to provide materials solutions for a sustainable future.