Faculty Directory
James Rondinelli

Walter Dill Scott Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Associate Chair of Materials Science and Engineering

Contact

2220 Campus Drive
Cook 3037
Evanston, IL 60208-3109

847-491-3198Email James Rondinelli

Website

Materials Theory and Design Group

Departments

Materials Science and Engineering

Affiliations

PhD Program in Applied Physics

Predictive Science and Engineering Design Graduate Program

Education

Ph.D. Materials Science and Engineering, University of California - Santa Barbara, CA

B.S. Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, IL


Research Interests

Rondinelli leads the Materials Theory and Design group at Northwestern University (NU), which consists of 1 research assistant professor, 2 research associates, 2 postdoctoral fellow, 14 PhD students, 1 MS student, and 2 undergraduate researchers. The group's work is distinguished by pioneering electronic structure theory models that build functionality atom-by-atom, enabling the predictive design of materials for transformative applications in structural, microelectronic, and quantum technologies. His group focuses on transition-metal compounds, alloys, and molecules,

uncovering picoscale structure–property relationships to engineer their behavior. By integrating electronic structure theory, multiscale simulations, and AI/machine learning, his team addresses grand challenges in materials physics for structural, microelectronic, and quantum information systems technologies in close collaboration with experimentalists.


Significant Recognition

  • Selected as one of two recipients of the 2017 Outstanding Young Investigator Award
  • CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (2015)
  • American Ceramic Society Ross Coffin Purdy Award (2014)
  • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award (2012-2013)
  • Army Research Office, Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award (2012-2014)
  • Joseph Katz Named Postdoctoral Fellow, Argonne National Laboratory (2010-2011)

Selected Publications

  • Yuan, Lin Ding; Georgescu, Alexandru B.; Rondinelli, James M., Nonrelativistic Spin Splitting at the Brillouin Zone Center in Compensated Magnets, Physical review letters (2024).
  • Bal, Mustafa; Murthy, Akshay A.; Zhu, Shaojiang; Crisa, Francesco; You, Xinyuan; Huang, Ziwen; Roy, Tanay; Lee, Jaeyel; Zanten, David van; Pilipenko, Roman; Nekrashevich, Ivan; Lunin, Andrei; Bafia, Daniel; Krasnikova, Yulia; Kopas, Cameron J.; Lachman, Ella O.; Miller, Duncan; Mutus, Josh Y.; Reagor, Matthew J.; Cansizoglu, Hilal; Marshall, Jayss; Pappas, David P.; Vu, Kim; Yadavalli, Kameshwar; Oh, Jin Su; Zhou, Lin; Kramer, Matthew J.; Lecocq, Florent; Goronzy, Dominic P.; Torres-Castanedo, Carlos G.; Pritchard, P. Graham; Dravid, Vinayak P.; Rondinelli, James M.; Bedzyk, Michael J.; Hersam, Mark C.; Zasadzinski, John; Koch, Jens; Sauls, James A.; Romanenko, Alexander; Grassellino, Anna, Systematic improvements in transmon qubit coherence enabled by niobium surface encapsulation, npj Quantum Information (2024).
  • Laorenza, Daniel W.; Mullin, Kathleen R.; Weiss, Leah R.; Bayliss, Sam L.; Deb, Pratiti; Awschalom, David D.; Rondinelli, James M.; Freedman, Danna E, Coherent spin-control of S = 1 vanadium and molybdenum complexes, Chemical Science (2024).
  • Roy, Abhinav; Sieradzki, Karl; Rondinelli, James M.; McCue, Ian D., Effect of chemical short-range order and percolation on passivation in binary alloys, Physical Review B (2024).
  • Zhu, Tong; Lu, Xue Zeng; Aoyama, Takuya; Fujita, Koji; Nambu, Yusuke; Saito, Takashi; Takatsu, Hiroshi; Kawasaki, Tatsushi; Terauchi, Takumi; Kurosawa, Shunsuke; Yamaji, Akihiro; Li, Hao Bo; Tassel, Cédric; Ohgushi, Kenya; Rondinelli, James M.; Kageyama, Hiroshi, Thermal multiferroics in all-inorganic quasi-two-dimensional halide perovskites, Nature materials (2024).
  • Zhang, Jianbing; Shen, Shengchun; Puggioni, Danilo; Wang, Meng; Sha, Haozhi; Xu, Xueli; Lyu, Yingjie; Peng, Huining; Xing, Wandong; Walters, Lauren N.; Liu, Linhan; Wang, Yujia; Hou, De; Xi, Chuanying; Pi, Li; Ishizuka, Hiroaki; Kotani, Yoshinori; Kimata, Motoi; Nojiri, Hiroyuki; Nakamura, Tetsuya; Liang, Tian; Yi, Di; Nan, Tianxiang; Zang, Jiadong; Sheng, Zhigao; He, Qing; Zhou, Shuyun; Nagaosa, Naoto; Nan, Ce Wen; Tokura, Yoshinori; Yu, Rong; Rondinelli, James M.; Yu, Pu, A correlated ferromagnetic polar metal by design, Nature materials (2024).
  • Nathan, Siddhartha S.; Puggioni, Danilo; Rondinelli, James M., Peierls-like distortion drives anion ordering in rutile TiOF, Physical Review Materials (2024).
  • Kautzsch, Linus; Georgescu, Alexandru B.; Puggioni, Danilo; Kent, Greggory; Taddei, Keith M.; Reilly, Aiden; Seshadri, Ram; Rondinelli, James M.; Wilson, Stephen D., Canted antiferromagnetism in polar MnSiN2 with high Néel temperature, Physical Review Materials (2023).
  • Lu, Xue Zeng; Rondinelli, James M., Tunable magnetic anisotropy in multiferroic oxides, Physical Review B 103(18) (2021).
  • Wang, Jiayi; Shin, Yongjin; Paudel, Jay R.; Grassi, Joseph D.; Sah, Raj K.; Yang, Weibing; Karapetrova, Evguenia; Zaidan, Abdulhadi; Strocov, Vladimir N.; Klewe, Christoph; Shafer, Padraic; Gray, Alexander X.; Rondinelli, James M.; May, Steven J., Strain-Induced Anion-Site Occupancy in Perovskite Oxyfluoride Films, Chemistry of Materials 33(5):1811-1820 (2021).
  • Wang, Yiqun; Iyer, Akshay; Chen, Wei; Rondinelli, James M., Featureless adaptive optimization accelerates functional electronic materials design, Applied Physics Reviews 7(4) (2020).
  • Hong, Seung Sae; Gu, Mingqiang; Verma, Manish; Harbola, Varun; Wang, Bai Yang; Lu, Di; Vailionis, Arturas; Hikita, Yasuyuki; Pentcheva, Rossitza; Rondinelli, James M.; Hwang, Harold Y., Extreme tensile strain states in La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 membranes, Science 368(6486) (2020).
  • Szymanski, Nathan J.; Walters, Lauren N.; Puggioni, Danilo; Rondinelli, James M., Design of Heteroanionic MoON Exhibiting a Peierls Metal-Insulator Transition, Physical review letters 123(23) (2019).
  • McLeod, A. S.; Zhang, Jingdi; Gu, M. Q.; Jin, F.; Zhang, G.; Post, K. W.; Zhao, X. G.; Millis, A. J.; Wu, W. B.; Rondinelli, J. M.; Averitt, R. D.; Basov, D. N., Multi-messenger nanoprobes of hidden magnetism in a strained manganite, Nature materials 19(4):397-404 (2019).
  • Harada, Jaye K.; Poeppelmeier, Kenneth R.; Rondinelli, James M., Predicting the Structure Stability of Layered Heteroanionic Materials Exhibiting Anion Order, Inorganic chemistry 58(19):13229-13240 (2019).
  • Wagner, Nicholas; Seshadri, Ram; Rondinelli, James M., Property control from polyhedral connectivity in AB O3 oxides, Physical Review B 100(6) (2019).
  • Huang, Liang Feng; Scully, John R.; Rondinelli, James M., Modeling Corrosion with First-Principles Electrochemical Phase Diagrams, Annual Review of Materials Research 49:53-77 (2019).
  • Harada, Jaye K.; Charles, Nenian; Poeppelmeier, Kenneth R.; Rondinelli, James M., Heteroanionic Materials by Design, Advanced Materials 31(19) (2019).
  • Kageyama, Hiroshi; Hayashi, Katsuro; Maeda, Kazuhiko; Attfield, J. Paul; Hiroi, Zenji; Rondinelli, James M.; Poeppelmeier, Kenneth R., Expanding frontiers in materials chemistry and physics with multiple anions, Nature communications 9(1) (2018).
  • Gu, Mingqiang; Rondinelli, James M., Nonlinear phononic control and emergent magnetism in Mott insulating titanates, Physical Review B 98(2) (2018).
  • Charles, Nenian; Saballos, Richard J.; Rondinelli, James M., Structural Diversity from Anion Order in Heteroanionic Materials, Chemistry of Materials 30(10):3528-3537 (2018).
  • Young, Joshua; Moon, Eun Ju; Mukherjee, Debangshu; Stone, Greg; Gopalan, Venkatraman; Alem, Nasim; May, Steven J.; Rondinelli, James M., Polar Oxides without Inversion Symmetry through Vacancy and Chemical Order, Journal of the American Chemical Society 139(7):2833-2841 (2017).
  • Balachandran, Prasanna V.; Young, Joshua; Lookman, Turab; Rondinelli, James M., Learning from data to design functional materials without inversion symmetry, Nature communications 8 (2017).
  • Lu, Xue Zeng; Rondinelli, James M., Room Temperature Electric-Field Control of Magnetism in Layered Oxides with Cation Order, Advanced Functional Materials 27(4) (2017).
  • Huang, Liang Feng; Lu, Xue Zeng; Rondinelli, James M, Tunable Negative Thermal Expansion in Layered Perovskites from Quasi-Two-Dimensional Vibrations, Physical review letters 117(11) (2016).
  • Huang, Liang Feng; Rondinelli, James M., Electrochemical phase diagrams for Ti oxides from density functional calculations, Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics 92(24) (2015).
  • Huang, F. T.; Xue, F.; Gao, B.; Wang, L. H.; Luo, X.; Cai, W.; Lu, X. Z.; Rondinelli, J. M.; Chen, L. Q.; Cheong, S. W., Domain topology and domain switching kinetics in a hybrid improper ferroelectric, Nature communications 7 (2016).
  • Gu, Mingqiang; Rondinelli, James M., Ultrafast Band Engineering and Transient Spin Currents in Antiferromagnetic Oxides, Scientific reports 6 (2016).
  • Lu, Xue Zeng; Rondinelli, James M., Epitaxial-strain-induced polar-to-nonpolar transitions in layered oxides, Nature materials 15(9):951-955 (2016).
  • Young, Joshua; Lalkiya, Parth; Rondinelli, James M, Design of noncentrosymmetric perovskites from centric and acentric basic building units, Journal of Materials Chemistry C 4(18):4016-4027 (2016).
  • Young, Joshua; Rondinelli, James M., Octahedral Rotation Preferences in Perovskite Iodides and Bromides, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 7(5):918-922 (2016).
  • He, Jiangang; Franchini, Cesare; Rondinelli, James M., Lithium Niobate-Type Oxides as Visible Light Photovoltaic Materials, Chemistry of Materials 28(1):25-29 (2016).
  • Kim, T. H.; Puggioni, Danilo; Yuan, Y.; Xie, L.; Zhou, H.; Campbell, N.; Ryan, P. J.; Choi, Y.; Kim, J. W.; Patzner, J. R.; Ryu, S.; Podkaminer, J. P.; Irwin, J.; Ma, Y.; Fennie, C. J.; Rzchowski, M. S.; Pan, X. Q.; Gopalan, V.; Rondinelli, James M; Eom, C. B., Polar metals by geometric design, Nature 533(7601):68-72 (2016).