astronomy

Geoffroy Hautier

Geoffroy Hautier is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Geoffroy Hautier rather than just read about it. In short: Geoffroy Hautier is a researcher and academic specializing in computational materials science and engineering. He is a Trustee Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University.

Key takeaways

Geoffroy Hautier belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Geoffroy Hautier to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Geoffroy Hautier from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Geoffroy Hautier is a researcher and academic specializing in computational materials science and engineering. He is a Trustee Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University. Prior to joining Rice, he was the Hodgson Family Professor of Engineering at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. He is one of the early developers and co-principal investigators of the Materials Project.

Education Hautier completed dual master’s degrees in 2004, earning an M.S. in Engineering from École Centrale Paris in France and an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. He earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2011, where he conducted doctoral research under the supervision of Gerbrand Ceder. His doctoral research focused on the use of high-throughput ab initio calculations to accelerate the discovery of functional inorganic materials.

Career After completing his Ph.D. degree, Hautier conducted postdoctoral research and later held a faculty position at UCLouvain in Belgium, where his work focused on computational materials science and high-throughput materials discovery. He is one of the early developers and co-principal investigators of the Materials Project, a large-scale, open-access computational database that provides information on the properties of thousands of materials and supports materials discovery worldwide. In October 2020, Hautier joined Dartmouth College as the Hodgson Family Associate Professor of Engineering at the Thayer School of Engineering. He was promoted to full professor and appointed Hodgson Family Professor of Engineering in 2024. In 2025, Hautier joined Rice University as a Trustee Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and became a faculty fellow of the Rice Advanced Materials Institute. His research at Rice focuses on high-throughput ab initiocalculations, machine learning–based approaches to materials discovery, and the design of functional inorganic materials for optoelectronic, thermoelectric, and quantum applications. In addition to his academic appointments, Hautier is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Matgenix, a company applying computational and machine-learning methods to materials discovery and optimization for industrial applications. He also serves as an Associate Editor of npj Computational Materials.

Awards American Physical Society Fellow (2025)

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Geoffroy Hautier

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Geoffroy Hautier claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Geoffroy Hautier before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Geoffroy Hautier ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Geoffroy Hautier

In research: Geoffroy Hautier appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Geoffroy Hautier in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Geoffroy Hautier is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Dartmouth College faculty, Living people, Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Geoffroy Hautier outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Geoffroy Hautier in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Geoffroy Hautier means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Geoffroy Hautier out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Geoffroy Hautier in simple terms?

Geoffroy Hautier is a researcher and academic specializing in computational materials science and engineering. He is a Trustee Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University.

Why does Geoffroy Hautier matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Geoffroy Hautier?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Geoffroy Hautier.