Computational materials scientist · BAM, Berlin
I use atomistic simulations to understand how glasses form, deform, and fail.
I am Dr. Achraf Atila. I work at the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) in Berlin on atomistic simulations of inorganic glasses. My research sits at the intersection of materials science and physics: I am strongly interested in the relationship between composition and physical properties of glasses, from the atomic scale up to macroscopic properties, and in building the simulation workflows that make that science possible.
News
- Published in Advanced Engineering Materials: "Supporting AI Readiness through Digital Workflows in Materials Science"
- New preprint submitted: "From compressed- to stretched-exponential dynamics in metallic glass"
- Published in Physical Review Materials: "Icosahedral short-range order suppresses thermal expansion in metallic glasses"
- Talk at the International Congress on Glass (ICG) 2026 in Lyon: "Atomistic simulations of glasses made FAIR"
- Quanta Magazine covers our ice-friction work: "Why Is Ice Slippery? A New Hypothesis Slides Into the Chat."
- Published in Physical Review Letters: "Cold self-lubrication of sliding ice"
Selected Publications
All papers, preprints and citation metrics are on the Publications page.
Open-Source Software
End-to-end workflows for computational glass science — structure generation, melt-quench simulations, property calculation, structural analysis, and a job API that exposes the whole pipeline to LLM agents.
Publication-ready matplotlib themes for twelve scientific publishers — exact column widths, compliant fonts, one string to retarget a figure.
More details on the Software page. You can also browse my GitHub and Google Scholar profiles.
In the Press
Our recent paper in Physical Review Letters on the slipperiness of ice attracted broad media coverage: