Awards

Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE) 2004, NSF Career Award 2006, AFOSR Young Investigator Award (YIP) 2006, ASEE Beer & Johnston New Mechanics Educator Award 2009

Research Interests

Predicting mechanical strength of materials through theory and simulations of defect microstructures across atomic, mesoscopic and continuum scales. Developing new atomistic simulation methods for long time-scale processes, such as crystal growth and self-assembly. Introducing magnetic field in quantum simulations of electronic structure and transport.

Courses and Lecture Notes

ME346 Molecular Simulations [Notes]
ME334 Statistical Mechanics [Notes]
ME340 Elasticity [Notes]
ME340B Micromechanics [Notes]
Importance Sampling [Notes]

Service Editorial board MSMSE
Dislocations 2008 International Conference

Selected Publications [more]

S. Ryu, K. Kang and Wei Cai, "Entropic Effect on the Rate of Dislocation Nucleation", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 108, 5174 (2011). [PDF] Research Highlight of Nature Materials.

C. R. Weinberger and Wei Cai, "Orientation-Dependent Plasticity in Metal Nanowires under Torsion: Twist Boundary Formation and Eshelby Twist", Nano Letters, 10, 130142 (2010). [PDF]

C. R. Weinberger and Wei Cai, "Surface Controlled Dislocation Multiplication in Metal Micro-pillars", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 105, 14304 (2008). [PDF]

Wei Cai, et al. "A non-singular continuum theory of dislocations", J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 54, 561 (2006). [PDF]