Alejandro Strachan is a Professor of Materials Engineering at Purdue University and the Deputy Director of NSF’s nanoHUB.
Before joining Purdue, he was a Staff Member in the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory and worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar and Scientist at Caltech. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Prof. Strachan’s research focuses on the development of predictive atomistic and multiscale models to describe materials from first principles and their combination with data science to address problems of technological or scientific importance. Areas of interest include high-energy density and active materials, metallic alloys for high-temperature applications, materials for nanoelectronics and energy, as well as polymers and their composites.
In addition, Strachan’s scholarly work includes cyberinfrastructure to maximize the impact of and democratize access to models and data for research and education. Prof. Strachan has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers and his contributions to research and education have been recognized by several awards, including the Early Career Faculty Fellow Award from TMS in 2009, his induction as a Purdue University’s Faculty Scholar (2012-2017), and the R&D 100 award in the category of software and services for nanoHUB.
nanoHUB services for FAIR simulations and data: ResultsDB and Sim2Ls
nanoHUB, an open cyber platform for online simulation, data, and education, seeks to make scientific software and associated data widely available and useful. nanoHUB removes traditional barriers of computational expertise, access to specialized hardware, and usability. It does so by enabling software developers and modelers to easily transform their research-oriented products into Apps or tools that run in the cloud with a simple interface presented through a web browser. This frictionless access enables researchers, instructors, and students to focus on the application of these products to advance their fields.
This talk will describe recent developments in our simulation infrastructure to address modern data needs. nanoHUB’s Sim2Ls (pronounced sim tools) make simulation, modeling, and data workflows discoverable and accessible to all users for cloud computing using standard APIs. In addition, published tools are findable (with digital object identifiers), reusable (via documented requirements and services), and reproducible via containerization. In addition, all Sim2L runs are automatically cached and their results are indexed in a global and queryable database.
