Andrew M. Rappe

Andrew Marshall Rappe is an American physicist specializing in theoretical and computational chemistry, physics, and materials science. He is the Blanchard Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.^[1] His work features the design of new materials for sustainable energy and advanced electronics by demonstrating how microscopic atomic and electronic structures determine material behavior.^[2]

Rappe earned his B.A. in Chemistry and Physics summa cum laude from Harvard University (1986) and his Ph.D. in Physics and Chemistry from MIT (1992).^[3] His dissertation, “AB initio theoretical studies of transition-metal, molecular, and photonic band-gap materials” was supervised by John Joannopoulos.^[4] After a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1994.^[1] He became an associate professor in 2000 and a full professor in 2006.^[1]

Honors include an NSF CAREER award in 1997,^[3] an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1998,^[5] and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1999.^[6]  He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2006.^[7] He was awarded a Humboldt Research Award in 2017 and a Cheney Fellowship at the University of Leeds in 2018.^[3]

Rappe is one of two founding co-directors of the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research (VIPER) at Penn, which focuses on preparing students for careers in sustainable energy.^[8]

Rappe's research contributions span several major scientific areas, including ferroelectrics, piezoelectrics, the bulk photovoltaic effect, catalysis and surface science, mechanochemistry, and light-matter interactions. He has made contributions to understanding how these materials change structures at the nanoscale, particularly those driven by temperature.^[9][10][11] He has worked on the mechanism of the bulk photovoltaic materials based on first-principles calculations.^[12] In the field of electrochemistry, Rappe focuses on theoretically designing catalysts for energy conversion.^[13] His group has also analysed problems in mechanochemistry,^[14] illustrating how mechanical forces, such as stress and strain, can be used to trigger or control chemical reactions on surfaces.