Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom
Cummings holds the position of Bicentennial Professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Prior to this, he was the John R. Hall Professor of Chemical Engineering at Vanderbilt University for just over 20 years, from 2002 to 2022. For 9 years (2013-2022), he held the position of Associate Dean for Research in the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering. For 20 years (1994-2013), he was associated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) at levels of effort ranging from 40 to 50%, most recently (2007-2013) serving as the chief scientist of ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS). His research interests include statistical mechanics, molecular simulation, computational materials science, computational and theoretical nanoscience, and computational biology. He is the author of over 470 refereed journal publications. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineers in 2023. In the US, he was the PI on over $45M in awarded grants, primarily from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Department of Energy (DOE), and National Institutes of Health, and was co-PI on over $240M in awarded grants. He has served on advisory boards to the DOE (the Basic Energy Sciences Committee) and the NSF (the Engineering Directorate Advisory Committee and the Advanced Cyber-Infrastructure Committee). He has been elected fellow of the American Physical Society, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK. He is the recipient of many awards, perhaps the most relevant being the 2013 John Prausnitz award, the most prestigious international research award in chemical engineering thermodynamics, presented every three years at the Properties and Phase Equilibria for Process and Product Design (PPEPPD) Conference.
