Phan Duc Anh, PhD
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Assistant Professor - Mechanical Engineering
Biography
Dr. Anh Duc Phan received his bachelor’s degree from the Honors Program at the Faculty of Physics, Hanoi National University of Education in 2009. He then worked at the Institute of Physics (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology) before pursuing graduate studies in the United States. He earned his M.Sc. in Applied Physics from the University of South Florida in 2013 and completed his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018. From 2019 to 2021, he was awarded the prestigious JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship in Japan. Since November 2018, Dr. Phan has served as a faculty member at Phenikaa University, and he is currently an Assistant Professor at VinUniversity. He leads an active research group working at the intersection of condensed matter theory and machine learning. His interdisciplinary work encompasses the glass transition and relaxation dynamics in polymers and amorphous materials, plasmonic and photothermal responses in nanostructures and metamaterials, the stability and solubility of pharmaceutical compounds, and AI-driven materials informatics. He combines theoretical models, molecular simulations, and data science (including quantum machine learning and inverse design algorithms) to accelerate the discovery and understanding of functional materials. Dr. Phan has published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and received both national and international recognition including the 2020 Young Researcher Award from the Vietnam Theoretical Physics Society and the 2025 DCMP Young Scientist Award from the Division of Condensed Matter Physics (DCMP), Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies. He is the Principal Investigator of NAFOSTED-funded projects and a co-PI of several international collaborations. Dr. Phan is Associate Editor of Journal of Science: Advanced Materials and Devices. His long-term goal is to advance a unified framework that combines physics-based theory, computation, and AI to solve real-world materials challenges and train the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists.
· AI for Materials Science
· Generative AI
· Quantum Machine Learning
· Molecular dynamics simulations
· The glass transition
· Relaxation of amorphous materials
· Metamaterials
· Plasmonics
· Photothermal heating
· Simulations for materials
· Modeling and Simulation of Materials
· Machine Learning in Materials Science
· Condensed matter physics
· Anh D. Phan, Katsunori Wakabayashi, Marian Paluch, and Vu D. Lam, Effects of Cooling Rate on Structural Relaxation in Amorphous Drugs: Elastically Collective Nonlinear Langevin Equation Theory and Machine Learning Study, RSC Advances 9, 40214 (2019).
· Anh D. Phan, Kenneth S. Schweizer, Influence of Longer Range Spatial Transfer of Caging Constraints on the Dynamics of Glass-Forming Hard Sphere and Thermal Liquids Near Solid Substrates, ACS Macro Lett. 9, 448-453 (2020).
· Anh D. Phan, Alessio Zaccone, Vu D. Lam, and Katsunori Wakabayashi, Theory of pressure-induced rejuvenation and strain-hardening in metallic glasses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 025502 (2021).
· Asieh Ghanekarade, Anh D. Phan, Kenneth S Schweizer, David S Simmons, Nature of dynamic gradients, glass formation, and collective effects in ultrathin freestanding films, PNAS 118 (31) e2104398118 (2021).
· Anh D. Phan, Confinement effects on the spatially inhomogeneous dynamics in metallic glass films, J. Phys. Chem. B 126, 1609-1614 (2022).
· Do T. Nga, Anh D. Phan, Thudsaphungthong Julie, Nam B. Le, Chu Viet Ha, Photo-to-heat conversion of broadband metamaterial absorbers based on TiN nanoparticles under laser and solar illumination, Mater. Today Commun. 35, 105794 (2023).
· Asieh Ghanekarade, Anh D. Phan, Kenneth S. Schweizer, David S. Simmons, Signature of collective elastic glass physics in surface-induced long-range power-law dynamical gradients, Nat. Phys. 19, 800-806 (2023).
· Do T. Nga, Anh D. Phan, Vu D. Lam, Trevon Badloe, Junsuk Rho, Optimizing the design of broadband solar metamaterial absorbers based on titanium nitride nanorings, Opt. Mater. Express 13, 2787-2797 (2023).
· Anh D. Phan, Kenneth S. Schweizer, Effect of the nature of the solid substrate on spatially heterogeneous activated dynamics in glass forming supported films, J. Chem. Phys. 160, 074902 (2024).
· Ngo T. Que, Do T. Nga, Anh D. Phan, Le M. Tu, Toward a better understanding of the photothermal heating of high-entropy-alloy nanoparticles, Mater. Today Commun. 41, 110997 (2024).
· Anh D. Phan, Do T. Nga, Ngo T. Que, Hailong Peng, Thongchanh Norhourmour, and Le M. Tu, A multiscale approach to structural relaxation and diffusion in metallic glasses, Comput. Mater. Sci. 251, 113759 (2025).
· Ngo T. Que, Anh D. Phan, Truyen Tran, Pham T. Huy, Mai X. Trang, and Thien V. Luong, Machine Learning-Integrated Modeling of Thermal Properties and Relaxation Dynamics in Metallic Glasses, Mater. Today Commun. 45, 112287 (2025).
· 2018: Ph.D. in Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
· 2013: M.Sc. in Applied Physics, University of South Florida, USA.
· 2009: B.Sc. in Physics, Hanoi National University of Education, Vietnam
· 2020 Young Researcher Award from the Vietnam Theoretical Physics Society
· 2025 DCMP Young Scientist Award from the Division of Condensed Matter Physics (DCMP), Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies
