Brady Bruno: Master of Engineering

Originally from Oneida, New York, Brady Bruno received his undergraduate degree in physics from Hamilton College and is a current Materials Science and Engineering Master of Engineering student here at Cornell University. In his free time, Brady likes to run, play guitar and mandolin, practice woodworking, and go canoeing. Brady has enjoyed learning more about materials science and entered the program when he realized he was interested in clean energy and sustainability. After graduation, Brady is interested in pursuing a career focused in solar cells and batteries, though he is open to a change of passion as he has begun to realize there are smaller, less researched topics in materials science that are just as important and research in these areas can create lasting impacts. 

For his MEng project, Brady worked with Professor Nandini Ananth at the Ananth Group at Cornell University, a research group in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology involved in using path integral and semiclassical ideas to develop approximate quantum dynamics methods. There, Mr. Bruno played around with electron transfer reactions, which in turn play an important role in many biological processes involving clean energy, like solar fuels. His project, “Reaction Coordinates for Multi-State Ring Polymer Molecular Dynamics” has two deliverables: a reaction coordinate that agrees with Fermi’s Golden Rule in the inverted regime and computer simulations that incorporate improved approximations or alternative sampling protocols. Mr. Bruno’s research focuses on a method with promises to overcome the limitations of TST, namely ring polymer dynamics (RPMD), and it aims to refine an implementation of TST that predicts reaction rates in multi-state, multi-electron practices.