Wentzcovitch, Renata M.
Oral history interview with Renata Wentzcovitch, 2020 September 17.
Interview with Renata Wentzcovitch, professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Wentzcovitch recounts her childhood in Brazil, and she describes how her grandfather sparked her interest in science early on. She describes her education at the University of Sô Paulos Institute of Physics where she developed an interest in density functional theory. Wentzcovitch discusses her interest in pursuing a graduate degree in the United States, and her decision to attend UC Berkeley and study under the direction of Marvin Cohen. She describes her thesis research on pseudopotential plane-wave codes and super-hard materials such as boron nitride and diamonds. Wentzcovitch explains the impact of High Tc Superconductivity on both her career and the field generally, and she describes her postdoctoral research with joint appointments at Brookhaven and Stony Brook on evolving electronic wavefunctions via classical dynamics. She discusses her subsequent work with Volker Henie at Cambridge to study silicate perovskite, which in turn led to her first faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota. Wentzcovitch describes the importance of Minnesotas Supercomputing Institute for her research, and she explains how her research focused more centrally on geophysics and the thermo-elasticity of minerals and their aggregates. She describes the founding of the Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials and explains her decision to join the faculty at Columbia and her involvement with VLab and the study of exchange-correlation functionals to address electronic interactions. At the end of the interview, Wentzcovitch discusses her current work on developing codes for thermodynamic computations and seismic tomography, and she conveys the value of pursuing international collaborations to fit her broad and diverse research agenda.
Renata Wentzcovitch is a professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. She completed her graduate studies at UC Berkeley and postdoctoral appointments at Brookhaven National Lab and Stony Book University. Wentzcovitch previously conducted research at Cambridge and was on faculty at the University of Minnesota.
Allen, Philip B.
Cohen, Marvin L.
Heine, Volker
Wentzcovitch, Renata M.
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Columbia University
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Universidade de Sô Paulo
University of California, Berkeley
University of Cambridge
University of Minnesota
Condensed matter. fast
Density functionals.
Geodynamics.
Geophysics
High temperature superconductivity.
Material sciences
Quantum theory
Seismology
Silicate minerals
Supercomputers
Thermodynamics
Tomography.
Wave functions.
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA