"I use computer simulations to understand how electrons and ions interact with each other and how such interactions determine the formation, function and degradation of materials."

With a Physical Chemistry background from Nankai University in China, Shuxia Tao started her PhD in 2007 at Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, TU/e. There she learnt Computational Materials Science and earned her PhD in 2011 with a thesis on hydrogen storage in metal hydrides for battery applications. After a short career break to care for her children, from 2013 to 2016, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at NWO physics institute NIKHEF for computational materials design for photodetectors. 

Since 2016, she leads a research group Computational Materials Physics at Department of Applied Physics, TU/e. Supported by several personal grants, CSER tenure track grant (2016), NWO START-UP (2019), NWO VIDI (2022), her group focuses on the devolepment of atomistic and multiscale computational methods for energy materials, currently with a main focus on novel semiconductors for harvesting solar energy. Her group is a part of Materials Simulation & Modelling (MSM) and she is a member of Center for Computational Energy Research (CCER) and Eindhoven Institute for Renewable Energy Systems (EIRES).