Dr. Barak Hirshberg

Dr. Barak Hirshberg was appointed as Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemistry in January 2021. Previously he was a Rothschild postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Michele Parrinello at ETH Zurich.

He completed his Ph.D. as an Adams Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. R. Benny Gerber.

The Hirshberg lab develops computer simulations for unraveling the static and dynamic properties of quantum and classical condensed phase systems, with a focus on molecular materials.

We harness the power of machine learning (and other) algorithms for overcoming the most fundamental limitations of current approaches: extending them to much longer timescales, to fermionic systems at finite temperature, and to many-body quantum dynamics. Using these tools, we investigate fascinating phenomena such as thermodynamic properties of ultracold trapped atoms, transport of hydrogen molecules in porous materials for energy storage, and atmospheric chemical reactions with high energy barriers on aqueous interfaces.