Scientists at the MPIE
Dr. Steffen Brinckmann is head of the group “Nanotribology” in the department “Structure and Nano-/ Micromechanics of Materials“ since 2014. Before that he was a senior researcher in the same department, which he joined in 2013. Brinckmann had several research stays as postdoctoral fellow after doing his PhD in applied physics at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) about the role of dislocations in fatigue crack initiation, in 2005. Before joining the MPIE, Brinckmann was a post-doctoral research associate at the Purdue University (USA) and at the California Institute of Technology (USA) from 2005-2008. After that he worked at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simula-tions (ICAMS) of the Ruhr University Bochum leading the group “Discrete Micromechanics and Fracture” from 2009-2012 and leading the project group “Microstructure – Property – Relationships” from 2010-2012
His research focus lies on tribology experiments where he investigates microstructure evolution during friction and wear. His projects investigate the tribology using micrometer asperities that mimic a single asperity on macroscale components with the aim to fundamentally understand the irreversible mechanisms that result in the energy and structural loss. Additionally, Brinckmann investigates the brittle and ductile numerical fracture mechanics at the microscale.
Dr. Mira Todorova is head of the group “Electrochemistry and Corrosion” in the department “Computational Materials Design” since 2015. Before joining the MPIE at the end of 2006 as a project group leader in the same department, she spend two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia. In 2004, Todorova received a PhD from the Technical University Berlin for her PhD work on the oxidation of palladium surfaces, which she carried out at the Fritz Haber In-stitute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. Since 2005, she had several research stays at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a fellow of the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM). Her research aims at the development and application of ab initio based multiscale simulation techniques to tackle problems in electro-chemistry, with a strong focus on corrosion and related topics. Her group and she perform calculations for a variety of systems, such as metallic alloys, semiconductors or water, investigating both bulk and surface properties by means of densityfunctional theory calculations, thermodynamic integration, molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations.