Simon Billinge joins UCSB as a professor of materials and physics, and as the new director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), taking over for materials professor Craig Hawker, who has served in that role since 2013. Billinge has spent the past seventeen years as a professor of applied physics, applied mathematics, and materials science at Columbia University after more than a decade as a professor at Michigan State University.
 
In his research, Billinge, who arrives on campus this month, makes extensive use of advanced x-ray and neutron diffraction techniques to study local-structure property relationships of disordered crystals and nanocrystals, and their role in the properties of diverse materials relevant to, for example, energy, catalysis, environmental remediation, and pharmaceuticals. He also employs neutron and electron-scattering methods, as well as advanced computation and analysis, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and graph theoretic methods.

A fellow of the American Physical Society and the Neutron Scattering Society of America and the recipient of multiple awards, Billinge, who earned his PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, said he came to UCSB for several reasons. “I like change and crave new experiences, and this was a perfect moment in my career to explore such a change into a new location with new colleagues and a new leadership role,” he says. “I was happy at Columbia, so the list of jobs I would have left it for was small. The CNSI position has all the characteristics that make it an exciting change.”

As a physicist and a materials professor, Billinge describes the close association between the Physics and Materials Departments at UCSB as “a strong attractor,” adding, “From my undergrad days, my training was in materials science, but I fell in love with physics in grad school and wanted to get a faculty position in a physics department.” He describes his move to Columbia from the combined Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State, to a materials program in the Applied Physics Department at Columbia as “natural, because it allowed me to do more applied work without dropping the basic science, [thus] bridging the physics and the engineering aspects.”

He says he is “super-exited” to to have the same kinds of opportunities at UCSB, noting further that “having strong applied mathematics and computer science on campus, as well as the Computational Science Center, which is co-run by CNSI, also presents a perfect platform to develop collaborations and seek ways to blend math, physics, and materials science and develop tools for the whole community.”

Like many others who have come to UCSB, for Billinge, “The ocean and UCSB’s proximity to it are really a high point for me,” he says, adding, “When I was young, I had to choose between two careers: joining the UK's Royal Navy or going into academics. It was a hard choice, because I really wanted to sail around the world and visit interesting places.”

Billinge was also attracted to UCSB by what he describes as “the dynamite combination of the quality of the UCSB faculty and their research coupled with a strong focus on collegiality. I am a very collaborative researcher, and I immediately knew that I would feel at home here. This focus on collaboration breeds community and positivity and this was so evident during my visits to campus. It is surprisingly hard to find at other places at such a kind of institutional level.”

As someone who has cultivated close relationships with his colleagues, Billinge says that the hardest thing about leaving Columbia was “the impact my decision has on other people who are slightly collateral damage: my students and postdocs,” which is why, he adds, “much of my current focus is to make sure that they come out of it in a positive way, and I accommodate their needs as best as possible.”    

In light of the administrative duties that come with the CNSI directorship, Billinge says that he is “crafting a small direction change” in his research while maintaining active participation in that work and in mentoring graduate students and postdocs. 

In terms of where that research might go, he says, “I am known for developing scattering methods to study disorder in materials and its effect on their properties. We apply the methods we develop to many different materials and scientific problems related to everything from pharmaceuticals to quantum materials and even ancient art and cultural objects. I’m very excited about collaborating widely with folks at UCSB as I continue to do this. 

“Recently, with my applied mathematics hat on, we have been applying AI and ML to this area, and I have learned about where these methods can be effective, and where less so,” he continues. “I am interested in using these approaches to address the problem of predictive synthesis and synthesizability. For instance, given a material you want, what recipe or synthesis protocol will give it to you, and how can we integrate such pursuits into the workflows of researchers at CNSI? This will be a bit of a departure for me, but I think the collective benefits will be good if we can make it work.”

Finally, coming to UCSB as a mid-career faculty member, Bllinge explains, “It has been on my mind that, over the years, my research has been helped enormously by larger-scale infrastructures and programs that were built through the efforts of others. I am thinking of national facilities, like synchrotrons and large-scale funding programs that underpin such efforts. I feel that at this stage of my career it’s important to give something back in that way. The administrative component makes the CNSI role attractive; more importantly, I see the opportunity to build infrastructure and programs that can benefit many people, as I have benefited. But also, it is still embedded in a faculty-research environment, so I won’t have to give up the science I love to do.”