Seán Kavanagh

Seán Kavanagh uses quantum mechanical simulations to identify bottlenecks in the performance of renewable energy materials.

Seán studied for his undergraduate in Nanoscience, Physics and Chemistry of Advanced Materials at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in his native Ireland, graduating in 2019. He then moved to London for his PhD in Computational Materials Science, in the groups of Profs. David Scanlon at University College London (UCL) and Aron Walsh at Imperial College London, graduating in 2024. Seán's research focuses on understanding and predicting the behavior of atomic-level defects in solid-state energy materials. These dilute species control many important physical phenomena (such as semiconductor doping and solar cell / LED efficiencies), yet require vast computer resources to accurately model.

As an Environmental Fellow, Seán will work with Professor Boris Kozinsky of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to develop machine-learning methods to describe defects in energy materials – primarily solar cells, batteries and catalysts. With the insights from these computational studies, device engineering strategies are devised which mitigate the harmful effects of these defects and thus optimize performance/efficiency in these key energy technologies.

Faculty Host: Boris Kozinsky, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences