Bio
Yuanpeng Zhang is a neutron scattering scientist in the powder diffraction group in the Neutron Scattering Division (NSD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). His research focuses on the employment of neutron scattering for the atomic level structure studies of functional materials, such as those for energy storage, magnetoelectrics, and among others. He also applies the state-of-the-art AI/ML method, algorithm and framework in the structure-property link studies, such as the combination of neutron diffraction and machine learning force field (MLFF) for structure model refinement, the combination of exhaustive symmetry search and supervised machine learning for phase transition studies. Meanwhile, he has been actively involved in software development to support the neutron powder diffraction data processing and analysis, such as the ADDIE environment for neutron total scattering data reduction, ADDIE web interface for structure mining and web-based Bragg and pair distribution function (PDF) fitting, RMCProfile package for fitting scattering data based on supercell approach.
Yuanpeng is a member of American Crystallography Association (ACA) and the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD). He is also serving as the guest editor for the Materials journal and he has been serving as reviewers for various peer review journals such as Advanced Science, Angew Chemie, Physical Review B, Physical Review M, etc.
He joined ORNL in 2020 as a staff scientist and prior to that, he was a postdoctoral research assistance in NSD, ORNL. He received his PhD in condensed matter physics from Queen Mary, University of London in the UK, in 2016, and before that, he was receiving the bachelor degree from Beihang University in China.
Awards
- 2025 Early Career Development LDRD Awardee
- 2024 Mentor of the year, first place, by ORNL postdoc association
- 2023 NSD Doing it Better Award
- 2022 NSD Best Paper Award
- 2021 NSD Division Director Award
Education
- PhD degree: Queen Mary, University of London (2012 - 2016)
- Bachelor degree: Beihang University (2008 - 2012)
Professional Service
- Guest editor of the Materials journal
- ICDD member of the Synchrotron & Neutron Scattering Methods Subcommittee