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Hi there! I thought I’d start using the blog feature to share my thoughts and/or cool little side projects I take on for fun. This post is really just a placeholder commemorating the fact that I figured out how to turn the blog option back on for the site template. Look forward to some actual content hitting this space soon!

publications

Investigation of Bismuth Triiodide (BiI$_3$) for Photovoltaic Applications

Published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2015

Early materials search efforts. I helped build the furnace, grow samples, and do characterization for this work.

Methylammonium bismuth iodide as a lead-free, stable hybrid organic-inorganic solar absorber

Published in Chemistry - A European Journal, 2015

I worked on characterization for this paper.

Segmentation and Tracking of Marine Cellular Clouds observed by Geostationary Satellites

Published in International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2016

A paper that grew out of my summer research at the Weizmann Institute back in 2011 and used some of the code I wrote back then.

Economically sustainable scaling of photovoltaics to meet climate targets

Published in Energy & Environmental Science, 2016

A really cool collaborative effort to apply our existing technoeconomic models towards climate change goals. I helped collate data and design the analysis.

Perovskite-inspired photovoltaics: Best practices in materials characterization and calculations

Published in Chemistry of Materials, 2017

I participated in the workshop that led to this (GIANT author list!) paper, in particular the XRD part.

Searching for ``Defect-Tolerant’’ Photovoltaic Materials: Combined Theoretical and Experimental Screening

Published in Chemistry of Materials, 2017

This was a big capstone of our early materials search efforts. I worked on the defect calculations and also grew the bismuth iodide samples.

High Tolerance to Iron Contamination in Lead Halide Perovskite Solar Cells

Published in ACS Nano, 2017

I contributed DFT defect calculations to this work, helping to determine the most likely sites and charge states of iron defects in hybrid lead halide perovskites.

Strongly Enhanced Photovoltaic Performance and Defect Physics of Air-Stable Bismuth Oxyiodide (BiOI)

Published in Advanced Materials, 2017

Another joint experimental-computational paper. I ran some DFT defect energy calculations for this work.

Rapid semiconductor device characterization through Bayesian parameter estimation

Published in Joule, 2017

This was our first paper on the Bayesian inference work, led primarily by my former grad student mentor Riley. He designed the study, we both wrote some of the code, and I did most of the data analysis.

Solvent-Engineering Method to Deposit Compact Bismuth-Based Thin Films: Mechanism and Application to Photovoltaics

Published in Chemistry of Materials, 2017

I contributed some DFT calculations to this paper.

A-site cation in inorganic A$_3$Sb$_2$I$_9$ perovskite influences structural dimensionality, exciton binding energy, and solar cell performance

Published in Chemistry of Materials, 2018

This is a primarily experimental paper which was led by my former postdoc mentor, Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena (now a professor at GA Tech!). He was having some interesting problems with phase impurities in the samples he was growing and I performed some DFT calculations to help explain the observations.

Structural and Chemical Features Giving Rise to Defect Tolerance of Binary Semiconductors

Published in Chemistry of Materials, 2018 (lead author)

This was my first lead-author publication! It describes the core of my defect tolerance work that will appear in my PhD thesis.

Bayesim: a tool for adaptive grid model fitting with Bayesian inference

Published in Computer Physics Communications, 2019 (lead author)

Code release paper for Bayesim, my Bayesian inference Python package. For more information, see the website.

Computational frameworks to enable accelerated development of defect-tolerant photovoltaic materials

Published in MIT Libraries, 2019 (lead author)

My PhD thesis! Now available online through MIT DSpace.

How much physics is in a current-voltage curve? Inferring defect properties from photovoltaic device measurements

Published in Journal of Photovoltaics, 2020 (lead author)

Last big chunk of my PhD work, fitting SRH parameters for iron in silicon using Bayesian parameter estimation

Marcus-Hush-Chidsey Kinetics at Electrode-Electrolyte Interfaces

Published in Journal of Chemical Physics, 2020 (lead author)

My first real contribution in electrochemistry! And some fun Julia coding to boot.

A Minimal Information Set To Enable Verifiable Theoretical Battery Research

Published in ACS Energy Letters, 2021

Giant collaboration to try to set some standards for verifiability/reproducibility in theoretical/computational battery research.

AutoMat: Automated materials discovery for electrochemical systems

Published in MRS Bulletin, 2022 (lead author)

I co-lead an invited perspective piece summarizing our ARPA-E DIFFERENTIATE project on electrochemical materials discvoery.

Nonequilibrum Electrochemical Phase Maps: Beyond Butler-Volmer Kinetics

Published in Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2023 (lead author)

(Software for) Building phase stability maps for any electrochemical kinetic model

Using Bayesian parameter estimation to learn more from data without black boxes

Published in Nature Reviews Physics, 2024 (lead author)

An invited Comment piece evangelizing BPE!

teaching

Science and QR Tutor

Tutoring, Yale University, Dean's Office, 2011

I served as a Science and QR (quantitative reasoning) tutor through the Yale Dean’s office. Students who were struggling in their classes could apply for a tutor and I would meet with them one-on-one and help them learn material and work on their homework. I tutored for a variety of classes including calculus and introductory physics.

MIT 3.23

TA, MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 2018

I served as a teaching assistant to the first-year graduate course 3.23: Electronic, Optical, and Magnetic Properties of Materials, taught by Prof. Geoffrey Beach, and won both the college- and university-level graduate student teaching awards for this service. Responsibilities included writing problem sets and solutions, giving recitation lectures, and holding office hours and exam review sessions.

Future Faculty Program

Teaching Preparation, Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University, 2020

“The Future Faculty Program helps graduate students develop and document their teaching skills in preparation for a faculty career. Participants in this program learn the principles of effective course design and pedagogy through our seminars, receive feedback on their teaching through teaching feedback consultations, and apply what they have learned in completing a course & syllabus design project and a statement of teaching philosophy project.”

27-100: Engineering the Materials of the Future

TA, Carnegie Mellon Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 2023

I taught our first-year undergraduate introductory MSE course in Spring 2023 and will do so again starting in Spring 2025. I undertook a substantial redesign of the curriculum to have three units focusing on structure, properties, and processing of materials rather than the more standard metallurgy-focused approach

27-210: Materials Engineering Essentials

TA, Carnegie Mellon Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 2023

I co-taught our sophomore professional skills class, teaching the half of the course focused on engineering computation in MATLAB.

Rachel C. Kurchin

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