physics

Kristin Persson

Kristin Persson is a physics 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 Kristin Persson rather than just read about it. In short: Kristin Aslaug Persson is a Swedish/Icelandic American physicist and chemist. She was born in Lund, Sweden, in 1971, to Eva Haettner-Aurelius and Einar Benedikt Olafsson.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Kristin Aslaug Persson is a Swedish/Icelandic American physicist and chemist. She was born in Lund, Sweden, in 1971, to Eva Haettner-Aurelius and Einar Benedikt Olafsson. She is the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at University of California, Berkeley and a faculty senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Between 2020 and 2024, she served as the director of the Molecular Foundry, a national user facility managed by the US Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Persson is the director and founder of the Materials Project, a multi-national effort to compute the properties of all inorganic materials. Her research group focuses on the data-driven computational design and prediction of new materials for clean energy production and storage applications. In 2024, Persson was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in the class of Chemistry. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2026.

Education Persson holds a Master of Science in engineering physics from Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden and completed a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden in 2001, under the supervision of Göran Grimvall. After her Ph.D., she joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral associate from 2001 to 2002. In 2002 she resigned her postdoctoral position to care full-time for her two daughters, born 2000 and 2002. She was rehired at MIT in 2004 and became a Research Associate in 2006. In 2008, Persson joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a staff scientist, and in 2015 she became a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Research The Persson Group is a research team that investigates materials' physics and chemistry using advanced computational methods and high-performance computing technology. Their work primarily supports clean energy production and storage applications. Persson leads the Materials Project,⁣ a collaborative and international initiative that calculates the properties of all inorganic materials. This project provides researchers with free access to the data and related analysis algorithms. The main objective of the Materials Project is to significantly reduce the time required to develop new materials by focusing experimental efforts on compounds that show the most promise based on computational analysis. Within the Persson Group, researchers apply their expertise in materials informatics and the high-throughput infrastructure of the Materials Project to design innovative materials for various clean energy applications. These materials include photocatalysts, multi-valent battery electrode materials, piezoelectrics, and electrolytes for advanced energy storage solutions. Some of the group's past research has explored the properties of lithium-graphene, phase transformations in high-voltage nickel-manganese spinel, intercalation mechanisms in lithium excess materials, novel oxide photocatalysts, and the correlation between solvation structure and electrolyte performance in multi-valent electrolytes. The Persson group collaborates with other Materials Project contributors such as Gerbrand Ceder's group, Shyue Ping Ong's group, and Anubhav Jain's group.

Awards and honors Persson has received numerous honors for her contributions to data-driven materials science and the development of open materials infrastructure. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025 for pioneering data-driven materials design and for her leadership of open materials databases. In 2026, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2024, she was named a Distinguished Scientist Fellow by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the class of Chemistry. She is also a fellow of several scientific societies, including the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Materials Research Society. Her honors further include the Cyril Stanley Smith Award (2023), multiple U.S. Department of Energy Secretary’s Achievement Awards, and the Falling Walls Award in Science and Innovation Management. She has been named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate for multiple consecutive years (2020-2025).

References

External links Kristin Persson publications indexed by Google Scholar Persson research group https://perssongroup.lbl.gov/people.html

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kristin Persson

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kristin Persson claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, 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 Kristin Persson 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 Kristin Persson 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 Kristin Persson

In research: Kristin Persson appears in physics 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 Kristin Persson 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: Kristin Persson is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American physicists, 21st-century American women physicists, Fellows of the American Physical Society, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kristin Persson 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.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Kristin Persson” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Kristin Persson in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kristin Persson 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 Kristin Persson out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kristin Persson in simple terms?

Kristin Aslaug Persson is a Swedish/Icelandic American physicist and chemist. She was born in Lund, Sweden, in 1971, to Eva Haettner-Aurelius and Einar Benedikt Olafsson.

Why does Kristin Persson matter?

Because it connects several physics 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 Kristin Persson?

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 Kristin Persson.