Team

Anirudh Raju Natarajan

Anirudh Raju Natarajan

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor

Anirudh received a B.Tech. in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, a M.S in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a Ph.D. in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He set up the Laboratory of Materials Design and Simulation (MADES) at EPFL in 2022. His research interests are in the computational design and discovery of advanced engineering materials.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Manura Liyanage

Manura Liyanage

Postdoctoral Researcher

Manura graduated from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka with a B.Sc. in civil engineering and a M.Sc. (Research). He got his Ph.D. from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada with the thesis multi-scale modelling of hydrogen diffusion in solids. He worked for the laboratory for multiscale mechanics modeling at EPFL and the laboratory for advanced material processing at EMPA as a postdoctoral researcher. His work at MADES is focused on ductility and strength of high entropy alloys.

Xin Liu

Xin Liu

Postdoctoral Researcher

Xin received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. in Mechanics from Tongji University, Shanghai, a Diplôme d'Ingénieur in Mechanics and Materials from École nationale des ponts et chaussées, Paris, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from EPFL. His research focuses on understanding the deformation and strengthening mechanism in metallic alloys, and the computational design and discovery of advanced engineering materials.

Doctoral Students

Yann Lorris Müller

Yann Lorris Müller

Doctoral Assistant

Yann received a Master's degree in Materials Science and Engineering from EPFL in 2021. After working for one year at the EMPA laboratory for Advanced Processing and Additive Manufacturing, he began a Ph.D. in Materials Science in the MADES laboratory in 2022. He uses first-principles electronic structure calculations and statistical mechanics techniques to compute thermodynamic and kinetic properties of multicomponent refractory alloys.

Deepak Somani

Deepak Somani

Doctoral Assistant

Deepak graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT KGP) in 2023 with a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering and a Master's in Thermal Science and Engineering. His research is focused on elucidating defect thermodynamics in alloys.

Claire Paetsch

Claire Paetsch

Doctoral Assistant

Claire received her B.S and M.S in Materials Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich. She worked as a research scholar predicting the energy landscape of Li-S at LBNL using first-principles. In 2023 she began her Ph.D. at EPFL's MADES laboratory. Her current research focuses on developing methods to design alloys for hydrogen related applications.

Lorenzo Piersante

Lorenzo Piersante

Doctoral Assistant

Lorenzo received his Master of Physics from the University of Oxford. His Ph.D. research focuses on the development of statistical mechanics approaches to the simulation of thermal processes in solid state systems, mainly metals.

Damien Lee Khai Jie

Damien Lee Khai Jie

Doctoral Assistant

Damien received his Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering and Master's in Materials Science and Engineering from the National University of Singapore. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the MADES laboratory, focusing on the development of high-fidelity machine learning models to predict the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of multicomponent systems.

Tang Leng Ze

Tang Leng Ze

Doctoral Assistant

Leng Ze completed his Bachelor's in Materials Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He previously worked at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). His research in the MADES laboratory focuses on the designing multicomponent alloys for electrocatalysis.

Administration

Alumni

Name Previously Year left First position after leaving
Victor Bugnion Master's student at EPFL 2026
Abdullah Aydemir Master's student at EPFL 2024 Doctoral student at EPFL
Nagappan Nataraja Chockalingam E3 student 2023 Doctoral student at UC Berkeley
Vivienne Liu ERIP student 2023 Doctoral student at MIT
Ayesha Ulde E3 and INSPIRE Potentials student 2023 Doctoral student at University of Michigan