Contact:

galen.craven@gmail.com

GCraven I am a Scientist in the Physics and Chemistry of Materials Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). In my group, we develop theories that enable the development of next-generation materials, electronics, and energy-conversion devices. My primary research areas are nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, chemical reaction dynamics, and machine learning for physics and chemistry. The main goal of my research program is to solve global energy problems.

News

2025

  • New paper "AWSD Reactive Burn Model for High Explosive LX-14" is published in Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics.
  • New paper "Heat transport hysteresis generated through frequency switching of a time-dependent temperature gradient" is published in Entropy.

2024

  • New paper "Reconstructing dissipative dynamical systems from spatially and temporally sparse sensors" is published in proceedings of NeurIPS Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences.
  • New paper "Thermodynamic transferability in coarse-grained force fields using graph neural networks" is published in Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation.
  • New paper "Uranium Mononitride (UN) Handbook" is published as a LANL technical report.
  • New paper "Multiphysics analysis of mechanical responses in micro-reactors under varied operating conditions" is published in European Journal of Mechanics - A/Solids.
  • New paper "The effect of temperature oscillations on energy storage rectification in harmonic systems" is published in Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter.
  • Manuel Palma has joined the group for the summer and will be working with Charlie Young and Galen on symbolic regression. Welcome, Manuel!
  • New paper "Machine learning method to determine concentrations of structural defects in irradiated materials" is published in Computational Materials Science.
  • New paper "Molecular heat transport across a time-periodic temperature gradient" is published in Journal of Chemical Physics.
  • New paper "Optical and transport properties of plasma mixtures from ab initio molecular dynamics" is published in Physics of Plasmas.
  • Landon Johnson has returned to the group for the third summer to work on nuclear fuels models. Welcome back, Landon!
  • Alex Guo has joined the group and will be working with Charlie Young, Javier Santos, and Galen on time-series forecasting. Welcome, Alex!
  • Zac Miller will be working with us on nuclear fuels modeling. Welcome, Zac!
  • Vidushi Sharma has joined the group and will be working with Galen and Alex White on nonequilibrium chemical dynamics. Welcome, Vidushi!

2023

  • New paper "Energy transport between heat baths with oscillating temperatures" is published in Physical Review E.
  • New paper "Data-driven methods for diffusivity prediction in nuclear fuels" is published in Computational Materials Science.
  • New paper "Simulations of self-and Xe diffusivity in uranium mononitride including chemistry and irradiation effects" is published in Journal of Nuclear Materials.
  • Charlie Young has joined the group and will be working with Galen, Alex White, and Sergei Tretiak on nonequilibrium chemical dynamics. Welcome, Charlie!
  • Emily Shinkle has joined the group and will be working with Nick Lubbers from the CCS-3 group and Galen on machine learning applied to coarse-grained simulations. Welcome, Emily!
  • Lucas Trojanowski and Nicholas Dailey have joined the group for the summer to work on nonequilibrium chemical dynamics. Welcome Lucas and Nick!
  • New paper "Generalized kinetic model for defect evolution in irradiated materials" with Brandon Wilson published as a LANL technical report .
  • Landon Johnson has returned to the group for the summer to work on uncertainty quantification of nuclear fuels models. Welcome back, Landon!
  • New paper "Electron hopping heat transport in molecules" with Abe Nitzan published in JCP.

2022

  • Landon Johnson has joined the group for the summer to work on machine learning models for nuclear fuels.
  • New award Renai Chen has been awarded a Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS) postdoctoral fellowship. Congratulations, Renai!
  • Renai Chen has joined the group to work on nanoscale heat transfer problems.

2021

  • New paper ""Heat transport induced by electron transfer: A general temperature quantum calculation" with researchers from UPenn published in JCP.
  • New paper "Analytical solutions of the Arrhenius-Semenov problem for constant volume burn" published as a LANL technical report .
  • Sam Battey has joined the group to develop models for defect growth in materials.

2020

  • New paper "Machine learning approaches for structural and thermodynamic properties of a Lennard-Jones fluid" with researchers from LANL published in JCP.
  • New paper "Ex machina determination of structural correlation functions" with researchers from LANL published in JPCL.
  • New paper "Wiedemann-Franz law for molecular hopping transport" with Abe Nitzan published in Nano Letters.

2019

  • I have been awarded a Director's Postdoctoral Fellowship at LANL.
  • I have been awarded a fellowship to work in the Center for Nonlinear Studies at LANL.
  • I have started a new position as a postdoctoral associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

2018

  • New paper "Electron-transfer-induced thermal and thermoelectric rectification" with Dahai He and Abe Nitzan published at PRL.
  • New paper - The second paper in our upside/downside series: "Upside/Downside statistical mechanics of nonequilibrium Brownian motion. II. Heat transfer and energy partitioning of a free particle" is published in JCP.
  • New paper "Upside/Downside statistical mechanics of nonequilibrium Brownian motion. I. Distributions, moments, and correlation functions of a free particle" with Abe Nitzan published in JCP.

2017

  • AIP has featured our recent work on phononic and electron-transfer-induced heat currents as a Scilight.
  • New paper "Electron-transfer-induced and phononic heat transport in molecular environments" in collaboration with Renai Chen and Abraham Nitzan published in JCP.
  • New paper "Lagrangian descriptors of driven chemical reaction manifolds" with Andrej Junginger and Rigoberto Hernandez published in PRE.
  • New paper "Transition state theory for activated systems with driven anharmonic barriers" in collaboration with researchers from the TranS-MI network published in JCP.
  • New paper "Electrothermal transistor effect and cyclic electronic currents in multithermal charge transfer networks" with Abe Nitzan published in PRL.
  • I have been awarded an ACS PHYS Young Investigator Award.
  • The Association of American Universities has highlighted our work on electrothermal transport.
  • UPenn has featured our recent work on electrothermal transport.

2016

  • New paper "Electron transfer at thermally heterogeneous molecule-metal interfaces" with Abe Nitzan published in JCP.
  • UPenn Chemistry, Nanowerk, and Phys.org have featured our work on electron transfer across a thermal gradient.
  • I have been awarded a travel grant to attend the 2017 Dynamics Days conference.
  • UPenn has published a story highlighting our recent PNAS paper on nonequilibrium electron transfer.
  • PNAS has published a commentary describing our recent work on nonequilibrium electron transfer.
  • New paper "Electron transfer across a thermal gradient" with Abe Nitzan published in PNAS.
  • I have been awarded a Peter Salamon Award for Young Scientists from the Telluride Science Research Center.
  • New paper "Transition state geometry of thermal chemical reactions on time-dependent double-well potentials" in collaboration with researchers from the TranS-MI network published in PCCP.
  • I have been selected to give a talk at the Emerging Technologies in Computational Chemistry Symposium at the Fall 2016 ACS meeting.
  • I will be presenting at the Dynamics of Natural & Artificial Systems For Energy Conversion: Insights Gained from Spectroscopic Methods & Theory symposium at the Fall 2016 ACS meeting.
  • New paper "Deconstructing field-induced ketene isomerization through Lagrangian descriptors" with Rigoberto Hernandez published in PCCP.

2015

  • New paper "Lagrangian descriptors of thermalized transition states on time-varying energy surfaces" with Rigoberto Hernandez published in PRL.
  • I have started a new position as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania working in the lab of Abraham Nitzan.