Arun Kumar Mannodi Kanakkithodi

Arun Kumar Mannodi Kanakkithodi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Materials Engineering at Purdue University, where he has been since 2020. He earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 2017 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Argonne National Laboratory’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (2017–2020). As a resident associate at Argonne’s Nanoscience and Technology Division, he bridges computational materials research with national laboratory resources.

• Research Focus: Accelerating materials design for energy applications via first principles modeling, machine learning, and materials informatics.
• Methods: Density Functional Theory (DFT), neural networks, ridge regression, random forests, and inverse design frameworks.
• Key Applications: Solar cells, optoelectronics, photocatalysis, and memristors.
• Leadership: Organizer of data science workshops at nanoHUB.org and active participant in the Materials Research Society (MRS) meetings.