Research Bio
Catalysis for energy conversion and storage, photovoltaics, batteries
Our research program focuses on modeling molecular processes in important engineering problems. Our approach is fundamental and interdisciplinary and combines using quantum mechanics and machine learning to study chemical kinetics, and surface, interfacial and materials chemistry. We aim to develop a fundamental atomistic and mechanistic understanding of the processes underlying important technologies and to exploit this understanding to discover, design and computationally prototype new materials, molecules and processes. Problems we investigate include modeling molecules and materials for catalysis and electrocatalysis, batteries, solar cells and solar thermal water splitting.
Computationally Accelerated Discovery of Catalysts and Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage
We use quantum simulations and machine learning to discover and design molecules and materials for the conversion and storage of energy, including; electrocatalysts for the conversion of CO2Â to valuable products and to reduce nitrogen to ammonia. We also model the materials and interfaces of batteries to discover promising new battery materials and to understand the processes that occur at their interfaces that affect their performance and degradation. We also use modeling to accelerate the discovery of new light absorbing materials for solar cells and redox mediators for solar thermal water splitting.
Electronic Structure of Interfaces
Interfaces between specific dissimilar materials have properties that enable many critical technologies including solar cells, flash memory, transistors, fuel cells and batteries. We model the electronic properties of novel interface structures to computationally study, design and develop new interface technologies for batteries, electrocatalysis and solar cells. One specific area that we focus on is using advanced methods to realistically model the complex environment of the electrified interfaces of electrocatalysts and batteries.
Personal Bio
Hometown: Lancaster, CA
Education:
BS in Materials Science and Engineering, University of California Berkeley, 1988
PhD in Materials Science and Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 1994
I am from California and am Mexican-American. I studied materials science, chemistry, physics and electrical engineering in college and graduate school. My wife and I have four children, all who graduated from CU, including 2 from Chemical Engineering. My daughter is a cancer researcher at Stanford Medical School, my oldest son is a Ph.D. student in Applied Physics at Caltech, my 2nd son is a Ph.D. student in Materials Science at the U. of Utah and my youngest just graduated and will attend dental school. We have a horse, two dogs, a cat, and two turtles. I have switched from being a runner to a cyclist, and mostly switched from mountain biking to road biking. Our family loves to travel, camp and especially to backpack. In my free time since 2019, I study all things Tesla.Â
Background: My father is from Los Angeles, CA and my mother is from Mexico City, Mexico. They met in Mexico, married a few years later, my mother immigrated to the U.S. and I was born a year later in Los Angeles. My father was a deputy sheriff for the LA County Sheriff’s Department and my mother was a homemaker. When I was 2 years old we (now including my brother who is 10 months younger than me) moved to Lancaster, CA and my two sisters were born several years later. I loved learning, especially math, but was a terrible student (never studied) and because I always earned good grades, my parents didn’t ever remind me to study or do homework – so I didn’t. I did take art and piano lessons, collect coins, rocks and stamps, went to church, participated in Boy Scouts and rode my bike a lot. In high school I ran cross country and track, back packed, became an Eagle Scout and was the Boy’s State representative for my high school. My parents didn’t go to college and I wasn’t sure if I would either, but did well on the SATs and so was recruited by many schools. I didn’t really know what I was doing but did decide to apply to two schools – Berkeley and MIT – and if I got in, maybe I’d go, although my parents were pushing me to go to the local community college instead.
I decided to go to Berkeley but didn’t get into electrical engineering, so was undeclared. I quickly learned that I couldn’t just show up to class and earn A’s, especially because most of the other students already took calculus, advanced chemistry, etc. that my school didn’t offer and so I either needed to learn how to study or end up at the bottom of the class. So, I studied – a lot! I really loved my classes and especially, chemistry and physics. I took 2 semesters of general chemistry from George Pimentel, who was so good he inspired me to think about being a professor someday (he also wrote me a letter at the end of the semester encouraging me to continue to do well and think about doing research). I did do well, and because I liked chemistry and physics, I decided I’d major in Materials Science and Engineering. I took a lot of classes, especially in physics and electrical engineering, but strangely, didn’t take any additional chemistry classes after general chemistry. I also did undergraduate research working with Eicke Weber. I also decided I would go to graduate school and possible pursue an academic career. So, I applied to MIT, Caltech, and Electrical Engineering at Berkeley. I had a hard time deciding between these three fantastic options, but when visiting Caltech I met with Bill Goddard and was instantly excited about his research and drawn to his passion for science.
Caltech was an amazing place and I was constantly exposed to new and esoteric ideas and brilliant professors and fellow students. It was definitely challenging. I made a lot of good friends and when I wasn’t doing research, I rode my bike a lot, including racing for the Caltech cycling team. Working with Bill and being a part of his group was amazing. I really liked the idea of doing research, working with graduate students and discovering new things. One of the projects I worked on was in nanotechnology in collaboration with Ralph Merkel of Xerox PARC. I decided that I’d find an academic position and focus on nanotechnology, which at the time was a completely new field that most people, including faculty, had never heard of. Stanford reached out to me, and told me they had an open position, so I applied for it. Fortunately, they decided to hire me because I didn’t apply anywhere else. Unfortunately, several faculty discouraged my from pursuing nanotechnology because it was “science fiction”, and so I pivoted to studying surface chemistry relevant to the microelectronics industry in Silicon Valley. Towards the end of graduate school I also married my wife Luanne, and before starting at Stanford, we headed off to MIT for me to work as a postdoctoral researcher with Klavs Jensen, who studied processes for fabricating integrated circuits, including chemical vapor deposition. Klavs was another wise and caring mentor who taught me a lot about being an academic.
Luanne and I arrived at Stanford with our 1 year old daughter and I began putting together a my research group and immediately started teaching (graduate thermodynamics). I had a joint appointment between Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and so I taught classes in and took graduate students from both departments. Our first son was born during my first year, and our third and fourth sons were both in my third and fourth years at Stanford. Being an assistant professor was challenging, but I loved working with my excellent graduate students and teaching class. Some of my students went on to become faculty (Jeungku Kang, Paul Zimmerman, and Ankan Paul) but most went to work in the local semiconductor industry. After my 7th year at Stanford, I went to Harvard to teach PChem and collaborate with Roy Gordon, another amazing scientist and friend. In 2007, we left Stanford and I moved to the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.
At CU, we continued to work in some of my research areas, such as atomic layer deposition, but we also started working in new areas, such as renewable energy, batteries, and catalysis. More recently, we started working on electrocatalysis, high throughput materials discovery, and solar cells. We’ve had many successful projects and students from the group have gone on to academic positions (Chris Muhich, Matthias Young, and Chris Bartel) or to work at national labs, companies or to form startups. While at CU I’ve also been our department chair and serve as the Associate Dean of Graduate Education in the College of Engineering.
Selected Publications
Muhich, C. L.; Evanko, B. W.; Weston, K. C.; Lichty, P.; Liang, X.; Martinek, J.; Musgrave, C. B.; Weimer, A. W. . Science 2013, 341 (6145), 540–542. .
Theriot, J. C.; Lim, C.-H.; Yang, H.; Ryan, M. D.; Musgrave, C. B.; Miyake, G. M. . Science 2016, 352 (6289), 1082–1086. .
Bartel, C. J.; Millican, S. L.; Deml, A. M.; Rumptz, J. R.; Tumas, W.; Weimer, A. W.; Lany, S.; Stevanović, V.; Musgrave, C. B.; Holder, A. M. . Nat. Commun. 2018, 9 (1), 4168. .
Bartel, C. J.; Sutton, C.; Goldsmith, B. R.; Ouyang, R.; Musgrave, C. B.; Ghiringhelli, L. M.; Scheffler, M. . Sci. Adv. 5 (2), eaav0693. .
Singstock, N. R.; Musgrave, C. B. . J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144 (28), 12800–12806. .
Awards and Service
Boulder, Faculty Assembly Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarly, and Creative Work (2020)
Outstanding Research Award, College of Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder (2017)
Outstanding Service Award, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder (2017)
Undergraduate Teaching Award, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder (2013)
Department Chair, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder (2016-2020)
Associate Dean of Graduate Education, College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Colorado Boulder (2020-present)