He joined UNR in July 2016. Before then, he was a research scientist in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Qi An received his B.S. from University of Science and Technology of China, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science from Caltech in 2012. His research area is computational materials science. His research specifically focuses on material properties under extreme conditions; deformation and failure mechanism of superhard ceramics, metallic glasses, metals, and thermoelectric materials; detonation and sensitivity of energetic materials; and surface chemistry. He has authored or co-authored over 90 publications in the peer-review scientific journals including Science, Physical Review Letters, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nano Letters, etc..