PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Heather Kulik

Also known as Heather J. Kulik, Heather Janine Kulik

Heather Kulik is a computational materials scientist at MIT whose group combines machine learning with electronic structure calculations to discover new molecules and materials. She studied chemical engineering at Cooper Union and earned a PhD in materials science and engineering at MIT in 2009, adding a Hubbard U term to density functional theory calculations of transition metal complexes. After postdoctoral work at Lawrence Livermore and Stanford, she joined the MIT faculty in 2013; her group built the open-source molSimplify software and trained neural networks to predict the properties of transition metal complexes. In 2025, she received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and her team worked with Duke chemist Stephen Craig on a machine-learning search that found ferrocene crosslinkers for tougher plastics. She is the Lammot du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering and a professor of chemistry at MIT.

Timeline

  1. By 2009

    Cooper Union and an MIT PhD

    A mathematically precocious child, she takes college-level classes in middle school and earns a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at Cooper Union in 2004. In MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, she works with Nicola Marzari, adds a Hubbard U term to density functional theory calculations of transition metal complexes, and completes her PhD in 2009.

  2. By 2013

    Postdocs and a return to MIT

    She does postdoctoral research with Felice Lightstone at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and with Todd Martínez at Stanford University. In November 2013, she joins the MIT faculty as the Joseph R. Mares Career Development Chair.

  3. 2017

    Neural networks in molSimplify

    By 2017, her group has published molSimplify, open-source software that builds candidate transition metal complexes from building blocks, and has added a trained neural network that predicts their spin state and geometry. With Jon Paul Janet, she publishes a 2017 Chemical Science paper on predicting electronic structure properties of transition metal complexes with neural networks. Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research names her to its 2017 Class of Influential Researchers.

  4. March 2020

    Flow-battery materials in five weeks

    In March 2020, she reports in ACS Central Science, with Jon Paul Janet, Sahasrajit Ramesh and Chenru Duan, on a neural network trained over four rounds to search nearly 3 million transition metal complexes. The search yields eight promising materials for flow batteries in five weeks, a culling the team estimates would take 50 years by conventional methods.

  5. 2021–2023

    Tenure and a TUM fellowship

    MIT grants her tenure in 2021, when she also receives an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry, and appoints her jointly to the Department of Chemistry in 2022. In 2023, she wins the AIChE CoMSEF Impact Award and becomes a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Technical University of Munich, with a focus group on systematically improvable modeling of electrochemical processes.

  6. January 2025

    A Presidential Early Career Award

    In January 2025, she is one of nearly 400 scientists and engineers to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The National Science Foundation nominates her for her 2019 CAREER proposal on spin-state-dependent reactivity in open-shell single atom catalysts.

  7. August 2025

    Machine learning for tougher plastics

    In August 2025, she and Duke chemist Stephen Craig report in ACS Central Science on a neural network that predicts the force needed to activate thousands of ferrocene crosslinkers. Craig's lab builds a polyacrylate with one of the top candidates, m-TMS-Fc, and the plastic proves about four times tougher than polymers crosslinked with standard ferrocene.

  8. As of October 2026

    Lammot du Pont Professor at MIT

    Named the Lammot du Pont Professor in Chemical Engineering in July 2024, she is also a professor of chemistry at MIT. Her group combines multi-scale modeling, electronic structure calculations and machine learning to discover new molecules and mechanisms in materials from metal-organic frameworks to enzymes. In a March 2026 Latent Space interview, she talks about AI for materials discovery and her group's AI-designed polymers.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Heather Kulik yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Heather Kulik - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. An explorer in the sprawling universe of possible chemical combinations | MIT News news.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Kulik, Heather J. - Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) ias.tum.de. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Heather Kulik: Innovative modeling for chemical discovery | MIT News news.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Neural networks facilitate optimization in the search for new materials | MIT News news.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Gilliard and Kulik Honored with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers – MIT Department of Chemistry chemistry.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Eleven MIT faculty receive Presidential Early Career Awards | MIT News news.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. AI helps chemists develop tougher plastics | MIT News news.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  9. Professor Kulik named Lammot du Pont Professor | Kulik Research Group hjkgrp.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  10. Heather J. Kulik – MIT Department of Chemistry chemistry.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  11. Why There Is No "AlphaFold for Materials" — AI for Materials Discovery with Heather Kulik latent.space. Checked 19 October 2026.