Background

Robert Rudd has been a staff physicist at LLNL since April 2000, using atomistic and multiscale computer simulation to study mechanics at the nanoscale. His work has included a range of topics including how materials deform at high pressure and high rates and how material is transported in molten metals and plasmas. He received his BS degree from the University of Virginia in 1987 and his PhD degree in Theoretical Physics from Princeton University 1992. His graduate advisor was Prof. David J. Gross and his thesis topic entitled "Light-Cone Gauge Quantization of String Theories with Dilatons" showed how a special gauge could be employed to calculate properties of string theories relevant to cosmology and quantum gravity. In particular, it was shown that a class of generalized, large-amplitude gravitational waves are exact solutions of the full non-linear string theory. Also it was shown how the special states of two-dimensional quantum gravity appear in the light-cone gauge. Dr. Rudd then spent three years in the String Theory group at Rutgers University (1992-1995) as a Postdoctoral Fellow, where he developed the formulation of gauge theories as string theory with special emphasis on non-perturbative effects. He then joined the Complex Systems Theory Branch as an SFA contractor, returning to his roots in Condensed Matter theory in collaborations with Dr. Warren Pickett and Dr. Jeremy Broughton. In 1998 he became a Lecturer in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Linacre College. The focus of his work at NRL and Oxford, and now at LLNL, has been the simulation of multiscale systems. Dr. Rudd is a former director of the LLNL Summer Institute on Computational Materials Science and Chemistry, a two-month summer school and mentorship program for graduate students at LLNL. He has been an editor (with A.P. Sutton) of the Oxford Series on Materials Modelling, a series of books published by Oxford University Press. He has served as the US Regional Editor of the journal Molecular Simulation. He has more than 150 refereed publications and is an APS Fellow.

Ph.D., Theoretical Physics, Princeton University, 1992

B.S., Physics, University of Virginia, 1987

1. "Void Growth in BCC Metals Simulated with Molecular Dynamics using the Finnis-Sinclair Potential," R.E. Rudd, Philos. Mag. 89, 3133-3161 (2009).arXiv:0906.0619
2. "High-rate Plastic Deformation of Nanocrystalline Tantalum to Large Strains: Molecular Dynamics Simulation," R.E. Rudd, Mater. Sci. Forum 633-634, 3-19 (2010).arXiv:0902.4491
3. "Coarse-grained molecular dynamics: Nonlinear finite elements and finite temperatures," R.E. Rudd and J.Q. Broughton, Phys. Rev. B 72, 144104 (2005).cond-mat/0508527
4. "Coarse-grained molecular dynamics and the atomic limit of finite elements," R.E. Rudd and J.Q. Broughton, Phys. Rev. B 58, R5893 (1998).
5. “In situ X-ray Diffraction Measurement of Shock-Wave-Driven Twinning and Lattice Dynamics,” C. E. Wehrenberg, R. E. Rudd, et al., Nature 550, 496–499 (2017).
6. “Femtosecond X-Ray Diffraction Studies of the Reversal of Plastic Deformation during Shock Release of Tantalum,” M. Sliwa, R. E. Rudd, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 265502 (2018).
7. “Predicting Phase Behaivor of Grain Boundaries with Evolutionary Search and Machine Learning,” Q. Zhu, A. Samanta, B. Li, R. E. Rudd, T. Frolov, Nature Comm. 9, 467 (2018).
8. “Observations of Grain Boundary Phase Transformations in an Elemental Metal,” T. Meiners, T. Frolov, R. E. Rudd, G. Dehm, C. H. Liebscher, Nature 579, 375-378 (2020).
9. "First-principles study of the Young's modulus of Si <001> nanowires," Byeongchan Lee and Robert E. Rudd, Physical Review B 75, 041305(R) (2007).
10. "The Onset of Void Coalescence during Dynamic Fracture of Ductile Metals," E.T. Seppala, J. Belak and R.E. Rudd, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 245503 (2004).
11. "Nonlinearly Additive Forces in Multivalent Ligand Binding to a Single Protein Revealed with Force Spectroscopy," T. V. Ratto, R. E. Rudd, K. C. Langry, R. L. Balhorn and M. W. McElfresh, Langmuir 22, 1749-1757 (2006).
12. "Equilibrium model of bimodal distributions of epitaxial island growth,," R.E. Rudd, G.A.D. Briggs, A.P. Sutton, G. Medieros-Ribiero and R.S. Williams, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 146101 (2003).
13. "Concurrent Coupling of Length Scales in Solid State Systems," R.E. Rudd and J.Q. Broughton, Physica Status Solidi (b) 217, 251 (2000).
14. "The Atomic Limit of Finite Element Modeling in MEMS: Coupling of Length Scales," R.E. Rudd, Analog Integ. Circuits and Signal Proc. 29, 17 (2001); see also "Atomistic Simulation of MEMS Resonators through the Coupling of Length Scales," R.E. Rudd and J.Q. Broughton, J. Modeling and Simulation of Microsystems 1, 29 (1999).
15. "Combining Constitutive Materials Modeling with Atomic Force Microscopy to Understand the Mechanical Properties of Living Cells," M. McElfresh, E. Baesu, R. Balhorn, M.J. Allen, J. Belak and R.E. Rudd, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99, 6493-7 (2002); also in Nanoscience: Underlying Concepts and Phenomena (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 43-47.

• Gordon Bell Prize in Supercomputing
• Fellow of the American Physical Society
• Fellow of the Institute of Physics