Invited Speaker

Elif Ertekin is currently professor, Andersen Faculty Scholar, and Associate Head for Graduate Programs in the Mechanical Science and Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests combine first-principles physics with machine learning to develop predictive models for materials, emphasizing the role of symmetry, physical mechanisms, and mathematical structure in the design of data-driven approaches. She holds BS degrees in Math and Engineering Science from Penn State, PhD in Materials Science from UC Berkeley, and did post-doctoral work at Berkeley and MIT.