Markus J. Buehler

In 2020, he set the pathogen of COVID-19 to music, exemplifying a relationship between art and science.

In a recent Stanford University study, he has been named as one of the world's highly ranked researchers in 2020, within the top 0.09% of all researchers in the nanoscience category. He collaborates broadly with experimental researchers in the United States, Europe and Asia. He serves as a PI and co-PI on numerous research grants, including several interdisciplinary research projects funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and many other organizations as well as industrial partners.

Between 2013 and 2020, he served as the Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. His research and teaching activities center on the application of a computational materials science approach to understand functional material properties in biological and synthetic materials, specifically focused on mechanical properties and nano-engineering of multiscale materials.

Buehler serves as editor or a member of the editorial board of several international journals including PLoS ONE, International Journal of Applied Mechanics, Biophysical Journal, Acta Mechanica Sinica, Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, Journal of Engineering Mechanics, Journal of Nanomechanics and Micromechanics, and the Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience. Since 2011 he serves as a co-Editor in Chief of BioNanoScience, a journal he co-founded. He was elected to the editorial board of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface in 2012.

He is the former chair of the Biomechanics Committee at the Engineering Mechanics Institute of the ASCE, Co-chair of the NanoEngineering in Medicine and Biology Steering Committee at the ASME, a member of the U.S. National Committee on Biomechanics, and participates in several other committees at ASME including the Committee on Mechanics in Biology and Medicine. He is also active in the Materials Research Society as volunteer writer for the MRS Bulletin, organizer of MRS symposiums, and through his involvement in the MRS Graduate Student Award program. Since 2010 he serves as the Director of the MIT-Germany Program (MISTI Germany). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.

Buehler received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the United States Air Force Young Investigator Award, the Navy Young Investigator Award, and the DARPA Young Faculty Award. Buehler was cited as one of the top engineers in the United States between the ages of 30-45 through invitation to the National Academy of Engineering-Frontiers in Engineering symposium of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2009, his work was recognized by the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on young researchers in the early stages of their careers. He received the 2010 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award for exceptional distinction in teaching and in research scholarship, the 2010 ASME Sia Nemat-Nasser Award, the 2011 Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award and the 2011 Rossiter W. Raymond Memorial Award. In 2011 he received the inaugural Leonardo da Vinci Award from EMI. His work was recognized with several other awards including the Alfred Noble Prize. In 2021, he received the ASME Drucker Medal.

Before joining MIT in 2005, he served as the Director of Multiscale Modeling and Software Integration at Caltech’s Materials and Process Simulation Center in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research after obtaining an M.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Michigan Tech, and undergraduate studies in Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Stuttgart.