Principal Investigator

Dr. Sakidja is a 2003 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Madison (UW-Madison) with a PhD in Metallurgy under the guidance of Prof. John H. Perepezko. After completing his school, he worked for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UW-Madison both as a lecturer teaching material thermodynamics and as a materials scientist conducting research on high-temperature protective coatings and ab-initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations on molten salts in collaboration with his mentors Prof. John Perepezko and Prof. Dane Morgan respectively. In Spring 2013, he moved to the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) as an associate research professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy collaborating with Curators' Distinguished Physics Prof. Wai-Yim Ching on the areas of electronic structure calculations, AIMD simulations and materials genome for high-temperature structural intermetallics and amorphous silica. In Fall 2014, he joined Missouri State University (MSU) as an associate professor in the Department of Physics, Astronomy and Materials Science (PAMS). In Fall 2019, he obtained his full professorship in the Dept. MSU is the only university in the United States that merged Materials Science and Physics & Astronomy altogether into one department, reflecting one of the dept.'s emphases in the interdisciplinary field of materials science. Dr. Sakidja teaches physics and materials science core courses to undergraduate and/or graduate students including fundamental physics, computational physics, math methods, E&M, applied quantum mechanics, applications of machine learning & neural network, structure of solids, materials thermodynamics, scanning electron microscopy and computational materials science. His broad research interests span from developing high temperature and high-strength protective coatings, ceramics & alloys, designing nano-scale assemblies/layers to accelerating discovery and synthesis processes of functionalized hybrid structures. He is also interested in product development and a scale-up process for commercial applications. Dr. Sakidja serves as the Director of Materials Science Graduate Program and the Chair of Master of Natural and Applied Science (MNAS) Interdisciplinary Program. He is also the recipient of an endowed Matthew & Patricia Harthcock CNAS Faculty Fellowship.

• PHY123 Introduction to Physics I
• PHY203 Foundations of Physics I
• PHY291 Computational Physics
• PHY353 Electricity and Magnetism
• PHY386 Undergraduate Research I
• PHY319 Mathematics for Science and Engineering I
• PHY486 Undergraduate Research II
• PHY509/609: Neural Networks and Machine Learning
• MAT514 Techniques in Electron Microscopy
• MAT 540 Thermodynamics of Materials
• MAT 580 Structure of Solids
• PHY509 Advanced Computational Methods in Science
• PHY575 Quantum Mechanics

• PHY609/MAT609 Advanced Computational Methods in Science
• PHY675 Quantum Mechanics
• MAT614 Techniques in Electron Microscopy
• MAT640 Thermodynamics of Materials
• MAT 681 Structure of Solids
• MAT 720 Advanced Quantum Mechanics
• MAT 790 Statistical Applications in Materials Science
• MAT 792 Introduction to Computational Materials Science