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The Group

The Group

Welcome to our group!

the group Our goal with this website is to make the field of materials more intuitive and accessible to a wide array of students and scientists, overcoming barriers between fields, as well as to introduce you to our work.

This field is intrinsically interdisciplinary, and much of its potential lies at the intersection of chemistry, physics, materials science, and data science, and I welcome input and discussion on my work, so please email me if you are interested or have comments at georgesc (at) iu [dot] edu

You can find my google scholar here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s4o2noYAAAAJ&hl=en

Group lunch at Turkuaz, July 2025. From bottom left, clockwise: Varsha, Bipasa, Madison, Akhond, Alex.

Group Values

We strive to build a group where each mentee is allowed to be creative, driven by curiosity and kindness. Interactions with other groups, including across departments and institutions are highly encouraged.

Students joining the group can expect to be trained not just to perform cutting edge research, but also in ‘soft‘ skills, such as public speaking and networking.

News about recent mentee awards/success can be found here.

About Alex (PI)

alex Alexandru B. Georgescu (Alex) CV

Alex is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University Bloomington in the Department of Chemistry department. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics, and an affiliate of the Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center & IU Quantum Science and Engineering Center.

His research is computational & theoretical, particularly focused on materials (with a focus on what are recently called quantum materials), and is open to undergraduate and graduate students – regardless of previous computational work experience, as well as postdoctoral scholars with previous computational experience who are interested in growing a new group – and gaining experience in doing so. Students can expect an empathetic environment focused on individual growth, as well as community support.

Thank you for visiting our website, and please contact me at georgesc [AT] iu (dot) edu.

Current Mentees (in order of joining)

Varsha Kumari, Ph.D Student (December 2023-Present)

Ph.D student; working on Correlated Electron Materials and Photoluminescent Materials.

Among other awards she’s gotten so far, she has also won an exceptional teaching assistant award, Kindig fellowship, and best talk at the Electronic Materials and Applications award in Denver; she also represented our group at Oak Ridge National Labs’ IEEE FerroSchool in 2025

Dr. Bipasa Samanta, Postdoc (Feb 2024-Present)

Ph.D, IIT Bombay. Correlated Electron Materials

Md Rajbanul Akhond (Ph.D Student, Dec 2024-Present)

High throughput materials discovery.

Carina Jacobson (UG, Purdue University - Physics, June 2024-Present)

Symmetry breaking with doping of correlated electron materials

Madison Genslinger (Ph.D Student, July 2025-Present)

Correlated Electron Cluster & Photoluminescent Materials

Dr. Mai H. Nguyen (Postdoctoral Scholar, Sept 2025-Present)

Correlated electron materials & Ion transport; High Entropy Alloy Nanoparticles

Previous Mentees

Emily Ward, Undergraduate Student (August 2023-May 2025)

IU Bloomington Chemistry, Math and Spanish. Pursuing a Ph.D at Princeton in Chemistry.

During her stay in our group, Emily won probably most awards our department can offer, including the ACS inorganic chemistry award, Schwarzkopf award for strongest graduating undergrad. She also published this wonderful work allowing the direct visualization of lone pairs in a solid for the first time: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7639/adc33e/meta

Julia Bauer, Undergraduate Student (Summer 2022)

Julia Bauer (Summer 2022 REU), Undergraduate student at Davidson College. Received a Smith scholarship from Davidson College to pursue an MS at the University of Edinburgh 2023-2024; currently pursuing a Ph.D in Applied Physics at Yale University.

Harshul Bhatt (Undergraduate)

(May 2024-Aug 2024), Undergraduate Student at IIT Bombay (Engineering Physics Major), joining through the IU Bloomington – IIT Bombay summer program. Continued performing research in materials science and machine learning at IIT Bombay following the summer program.

Main Project: Machine learning for quantum materials’ discovery.

Peiwen Ren (Undergraduate)

(Fall 2020-Spring 2021), Northwestern University (co-mentored with James Rondinelli) Undergraduate student majoring in Materials Science and Engineering. Continued to pursue a Master’s at Stanford University

Christopher Bean (Research Experience for Teachers)

(Summer 2020, through Research Experience for Teachers, co-mentored with James Rondinelli).

Proceeded to pursue a Ph.D in Materials Science at UIUC.