Ethan Ritz

Teaching: In the classroom, Professor Ritz strives to engage students through multiple perspectives and an interactive environment that blends both applications and theory. He believes that engineering education exhibits a unique tension and synthesis between the often abstract mathematics required to model engineering systems, and the physical intuition young engineers often already have from exploring, tinkering, and creating objects in the world around them. He believes he teaches best by showing how elegant but rigorous models can explain what they already have seen to be true for everyday objects in their own lives or from in-class demonstrations, then apply those models to more complex engineering systems.

Research: Professor Ritz uses computational tools like density functional theory and molecular dynamics (MD) as well as symmetry and group theory to probe macroscale materials properties such as elasticity, phase behaviour, ferroelectricity, superconductivity, and magnetism through atomic scale simulations. His current work explores a wide range of materials systems, including transition metal oxides, high entropy alloys, and cements.