Vincent Meunier is a Belgian/American condensed matter and materials physicist known for his theoretical and computational research on electronic, optoelectronic, and structural properties of low-dimensional materials. Among his contributions are the quantum mechanical description of processes responsible for scanning tunneling image formation in low-dimensional materials, the development of a microscopic theory of nanocapacitors, and contributions to the theory of electronic transport and ultra-low frequencyvibrational modes in van der Waals heterostructures. He is the Head and Professor in the Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, USA where he holds the Gayl and Jeffrey Kodosky Constellation Chair in Physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Institute of Physics, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Education and early career
Meunier completed his high-school training in the Institut Saint-Michel in Neufchateau, Belgium in 1992. While studying at UNamur, in Namur he earned a B.Sc. in Physics and a M.Sc. in Physics and Chemistry of Mesoscopic Systems. He then completed a Ph.D. in Physics in 1999 as a Research Fellow supported by a FRIA scholarship from the National Fund for Scientific Research of Belgium. Early January 2000, Meunier became a post-doctoral Fellow at the Physics Department of the North Carolina State University under Jerry Bernholc and Christopher Roland, and later a research associate with the Computer Science and Mathematics Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the supervision of Thomas Zacharia. In April 2004, he became a R&D Staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was among the inaugural staff of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge where he was appointed as Senior R&D Staff member in 2009.
Later career and current positions
In 2010, Meunier accepted a Chaired Associate Professor appointment with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. By doing so, Meunier completed the Gail and Jeffrey L. Kodosky ’70 Constellation following Prof. 's appointment in 2008. In January 2015, Meunier was appointed as Full Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy and in July 2015 he succeeded to Prof. Angel Garcia as the head of the Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with an appointment renewed for 3 additional years starting July 2018. In January 2018, Meunier became an Editor of the Elsevier journal Carbon and, in January 2020, he became Senior Editor of that journal. In October 2018, he joined the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
2007: Oak Ridge National Laboratory Early Career Award for scientific accomplishments.
Educational Activities
Meunier's teaching focuses on computational and quantum physics education. He developed a Computational Physics curriculum at the senior undergraduate level and taught that course from 2010 to 2015. Since 2010, he also teaches advanced courses such as Introduction to Density Functional Theory and Advanced Computational Physics at the graduate level. He has been teaching Quantum Mechanics to physics undergraduates at RPI since 2017.
Research Activities
At RPI, Meunier leads the Innovative Computational Material Physics group where he performs research in low-dimensional materials and domains where he collaboratively works with engineers and experimentalists to optimize these materials, starting at the atomic level and targeting functionality. He has contributed on an array of computational materials science topics including electronic transport, vibrational properties, energy storage in supercapacitors, the physics of reduced dimensional materials such as carbon nanotubes and nanoribbons, and two-dimensional materials.
