Annual Symposium
ENERGIZE NRT Annual Symposium:
DATA-DRIVEN DISCOVERY IN
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY MATERIALS
Thursday, April 9, 2026
17th Floor, Duan Family Center for Computing and Data Science, Boston University
The ENERGIZE NRT Annual Symposium brings together researchers, students, and industry partners for a full day of scientific exchange centered on this year’s theme: Data‑Driven Discovery in Sustainable Energy Materials. The event will feature a keynote lecture by Jeffrey Neaton, offering insights at the forefront of computational materials science. Attendees will also engage with cutting-edge student research during the graduate poster session, hear from academic leaders in a series of faculty talks, and gain perspectives on emerging career pathways through an industry panel. The symposium aims to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and showcase innovative data‑enabled approaches to advancing sustainable energy materials.
Faculty Speakers
Bio: Dr. Peter Schindler is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, leading the Data-Driven Renewables Research (D2R2) group, which seeks to discover novel materials for renewable energy applications using high-throughput quantum chemistry calculations and data-driven predictions of materials properties. His work was featured in the RSC Nanoscale 2024 Emerging Investigators collection and on the covers of Advanced Materials, ACS Energy Letters, and Digital Discovery.
Bio: Pankaj Mehta is a theoretical physicist and professor of physics at Boston University. His research focuses on problems at the interface of physics, biology, and machine learning, using tools from statistical physics to understand how complex collective behaviors emerge in biological systems, such as cellular decision-making and microbial ecosystems. Mehta earned his B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in physics from Rutgers University, followed by postdoctoral research at Princeton University. He joined Boston University in 2010 and is affiliated with several interdisciplinary initiatives, including bioinformatics and regenerative medicine.
Bio: . Werner’s research is focused on the fabrication of functional materials and structures with features sizes from the nano- to the micrometer scale, and its impact on material properties and performance. We discover and develop bottom-up fabrication paradigms with a high degree of spatial control utilizing both physical and chemical phenomena. Areas of current research include phase separation of complex suspensions for architected electrodes, self-assembly of block copolymers, and electrodeposition of polymer networks as functional coatings and interphases for novel architected energy storage and sustainability technologies.
Bio: Boris Kozinsky works at the intersection of fundamental physics of materials properties, efficient computational algorithms, and machine learning methods. The overall vision is to leverage the rapidly expanding power of computation and data science to accelerate discovery and design of new practical materials needed for breakthroughs in energy storage and conversion systems. Performance of these systems is controlled by atomic-scale transport and reaction mechanisms and their coupling at different length and time scales that are difficult to probe by experiment alone. Atomistic and electronic structure computations are emerging as a powerful tool for understanding and distilling the design rules governing quantum-level microscopic effects.
Industry Panel