Risto M. Nieminen
Aalto University School of Science and Technology
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Primary Section: 33, Applied Physical Sciences Secondary Section: 13, Physics Membership Type:
International Member
(elected 2018)
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Biosketch
Risto Nieminen is Distinguished Professor of Physics (emeritus) at Aalto University in Finland and its former Dean of Science. His research area is condensed-matter and materials physics, especially theoretical and computational methods as applied to multiscale materials modelling. He studied at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) and in Cambridge University, and was postdoc at NORDITA, Copenhagen. Risto Nieminen has been associate professor at Jyväskylä University, Finland and visiting professor at Cornell University, USA, before joining Aalto in 1987. He served as the scientific director of the Center for Scientific Computing (CSC) in 1989-96. He was the founder and director (2000-2013) of COMP, the Finnish Center for Excellence for Computational Nanoscience at Aalto. He is former chairman of the Psi-k European Network for electronic-structure calculations. Nieminen is honorary chairman of the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Fellow of American Physical Society and Institute of Physics (UK). He was granted the title of Academician of Science in 2014, and is President of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.
Research Interests
Risto Nieminen’s research area is condensed-matter and materials physics, especially theoretical and computational methods as applied to multiscale materials modelling. Computational materials science enables predictive calculation of physical and chemical properties from electronic and atomic scales, governed by quantum physics, to continuum. He has developed widely used methods and applied them in interpreting a variety of experimental results for e.g. atomic-scale defects, surfaces and interfaces of solids and for nanoscale structures and assemblies. Density-functional theory and its extensions to multi-component and time-dependent cases is the framework for extensive first-principles computation of electronic structure and properties, including dynamical and non-equilibrium properties of condensed matter. Among the many applications are electronic, magnetic, transport, thermodynamic and mechanical properties, accessible for a number of spectroscopic and other probes. An important application area has been defects and doping in semiconductors and two-dimensional materials. The research has contributed to the understanding of carrier concentration and compensation, defect metastability, doping limits, diffusivity, and complex formation, important for (opto)electronics applications. This work includes wide-gap and insulating materials, nitrides, complex oxides, perovskites, and chalcopyrites, as well as graphene and related materials. Large-scale computation can also be combined with extensive databases and machine-learning methods to systematically search and discover new materials. Risto Nieminen is the founding editor of two research journals, Computational Materials Science and Electronic Structure.
