Research Scientist, Photonic Materials Discovery

Your Impact at LILA We are seeking a computational materials scientist to discover and optimize materials for electro-optic and photonic technologies. The role centers on understanding how composition, structure, defects, processing conditions, and operating environments influence optical and electro-optic behavior—and translating those insights into experimentally testable materials hypotheses. You will develop first-principles and multiscale simulation workflows spanning electronic-structure calculations, lattice dynamics, atomistic modeling, and connections to electromagnetic or device-level models. These workflows will predict properties such as electronic structure, dielectric and optical response, polarization, phonons, and electro-optic coefficients. You will also integrate these capabilities into automated, agentic discovery systems that can plan studies, select and invoke tools, evaluate results, recover from failures, and iteratively refine computational hypotheses. This is a hands-on scientific role at the intersection of condensed-matter physics, materials chemistry, photonics, and AI-enabled discovery. You will collaborate with experimental scientists, ML researchers, and software engineers to build validated workflows, establish structure–property–performance relationships, and prioritize candidates for experimental evaluation. What You'll Be Building Lead computational discovery efforts for materials relevant to electro-optic and integrated photonic applications. Develop and validate first-principles, atomistic, and multiscale workflows—including DFT and response-property calculations—to predict electronic, vibrational, dielectric, optical, and electro-optic behavior. Interpret material response across composition, structure, defects, interfaces, strain, and temperature; assess stability, synthesizability, and performance tradeoffs to prioritize candidates. Connect intrinsic material properties to device requirements such as optical loss, modulation e