Bernardus Rendy is currently a 4th-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, where he is advised by Professor Gerbrand Ceder.
Bernardus received his B.S. in Engineering Physics from Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) in Indonesia, where he computationally studied the decomposition of ethylene carbonate on binary metal oxides and the strain effects on band structures and the Dirac nodal-line of a topological semimetal using density functional theory.
Bernardus’ doctoral research focuses on the design, development, and operation of autonomous laboratories for the accelerated synthesis of inorganic materials. The traditional synthesis of new materials is challenging and slow due to the lack of integration between computational modeling, design/decision making, processing, handling, and characterization. Autonomous laboratories address these gaps by serving as platforms that test, improve, and utilize all components, enabling the processes to run continuously, efficiently, and in an integrated manner.
As a Kavli ENSI fellow, Bernardus will work on establishing an autonomous framework for optimizing materials synthesis by integrating robotic synthesis, multi-modal characterization, machine-learned data interpretation, artificial intelligence captured from literature, and ab initio modeling. Specifically, he will focus on robotic sample preparation and handling, as well as automated data analysis for scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, combined with an existing automated X-ray diffraction. This will result in a unified multi-modal characterization of phases, microstructures, and spatial elemental distribution. A decision-making algorithm will use the results to autonomously optimize the synthesis of candidate energy materials for further nanoscale features engineering.