Welcome!

I am Aditya Nandy, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) at UCLA.

I am a theorist and computationalist. My interests lie in understanding how materials and biological systems undergo reactivity or respond to external perturbations, with the goal of connecting microscopic interactions to the emergent behavior they produce at the mesoscale. Since that connection spans many time and length scales, our work sits at the intersection of quantum chemistry, statistical mechanics, continuum mechanics, and machine learning.

We take two distinct approaches in our work. The first is physics-based, enabling us to build models that resolve mechanisms from electronic structure to continuum descriptions. The second is to encode what we know from physics or chemistry as constraints into generative models. We apply these ideas to both biological systems (e.g. proteins and RNAs) and materials systems (e.g. porous materials and transition metal complexes). A unifying theme across most of what the group studies is the role(s) transition metals play in puzzling or emergent behavior.

Importantly, we are looking for graduate students to join us starting in Fall 2027 (up to 2 openings are anticipated). No computational experience is necessary. To be considered in my group, please apply to the UCLA CBE department, and list me as your first choice. Our department does direct-to-group admissions, so if you do not list me as your first choice, it is unlikely that you will be able to join my group. Prospective graduate students should visit the co-workers page for more information.

About Me

I joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA as an Assistant Professor in July 2025. Prior to joining UCLA, I earned my B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley. At UC Berkeley, I was an experimental solid-state NMR spectroscopist, working with Prof. Jeffrey A. Reimer on metal-organic frameworks. As a graduate student, I switched fields and obtained my Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry from MIT in 2023 where I was trained by Prof. Heather J. Kulik , studying transition metal complexes and metal-organic frameworks using quantum chemical and data driven methods. After my Ph.D., I moved towards studying biological systems. I was a Schmidt AI+Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago, where I was trained jointly by Prof. Benoît Roux, Prof. Eduardo Perozo, and Prof. Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan. My postdoctoral research focused on bridging atomistic membrane protein models with continuum cellular models to understand mechanics of hearing. Outside of science, I enjoy taking long walks, visiting coffee shops, talking with friends, and cooking.