Kozinsky receives McDonald Mentoring Award

Boris Kozinsky, the Gordon McKay Professor of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been awarded the Capers W. McDonald and Marion K. McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising.

The award was established by Capers and Marion McDonald in 2008. It recognizes leaders in engineering and applied sciences who, as exemplary mentors and advisors, have significantly and consistently supported the personal and professional development of others.

Kozinsky was praised by nominators for being “thoughtful, patient, and kind” and for offering “tangible” “effective” and “useful” advice on research and career opportunities.

"He fundamentally changed my trajectory as a researcher. His mentoring was the reason I joined Harvard, and I am still extremely happy I did,” wrote a graduate student. 

 "Boris has a unique ability to let me do and explore whatever I find exciting, while still being involved and providing useful guidance which ensures that I make progress...At the same time as being simply a good person who genuinely cares about us,” wrote another graduate student.

Kozinsky joined SEAS in 2018 after establishing and leading the computational materials science team at Bosch Research. He received his B.S. degrees in Physics, Mathematics, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and PhD degree in Physics from MIT. He was recently named a Fellow of the American Physical Society and led a team that was selected as a finalist for the ACM Gordon Bell Prize in scientific computing.

Kozinsky’s Materials Intelligence Research group is working to accelerate the discovery and design of materials by combining computational physics, chemistry, and mathematics with machine learning to understand phenomena at the quantum and atomistic level.