Faculty News: New Faculty

ALLIE OBERMEYER
Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering
Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT, 2014–2016;
PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2013;
BS, Rice University, 2008

Allie Obermeyer’s research is focused on engineering protein-based materials for applications in biomedicine and biotechnology. She is interested in improving the physical properties and functionality of proteins by combining them with robust, responsive polymeric materials. Through the genetic and synthetic modification of proteins, she seeks to obtain responsive control of protein assembly and activity. Obermeyer plans to teach thermodynamics and biochemical engineering.

OMRI WEINSTEIN
Assistant Professor, Computer Science Simons Society Junior Fellow, Courant Institute, New York University, 2017; PhD, Princeton University, 2015; BS, Tel Aviv University, Israel, 2010

Omri Weinstein is interested in interactive communications and information theory and their role in computational complexity, data structures, and economics. His research in information complexity has led to significant progress on some of the major open problems in communication and circuit complexity and to a better understanding of the limits of parallel computation. This fall, Weinstein will be teaching a new course, Information Theory in Computer Science, which will showcase some of the exciting recent techniques and applications of information theory to computational complexity.

RENATA WENTZCOVITCH
Professor, Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics Postdoctoral Researcher, Cambridge University and The Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1994; Research Associate, Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University, 1992; PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1988; MS, University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1982; BS, University of São Paulo, 1980

Renata Wentzcovitch’s research stands at the interface of computational materials physics and mineral physics. Her work seeks understanding of atomic scale phenomena in materials at planetary interior conditions. She and her group have introduced or popularized several methods to simulate materials at extreme conditions. In her previous appointment at the University of Minnesota, Wentzcovitch was a professor of materials science and engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and a member of the graduate faculties of the School of Physics and Astronomy, Department of Earth Sciences, Chemical Physics Program, and Scientific Computing Program. She was also the founding director of the Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials there. She was recently elected vicechair of the Division of Computational Physics of the American Physical Society.