Mark Tschopp, PhD
Scientist, leader, and educator whose career spans materials science, solid mechanics, machine learning & AI, and the science of science — modeling, simulation, and data-driven research from atoms to organizations.
About
I am a scientist. And a leader. An engineer — well, sometimes. Definitely an educator. And a Star Wars fan… can I be a Jedi? Why can't I be all of these things? In fact, I have deliberately refused to choose among them. My research has ranged across materials science, solid mechanics, and computational science, and in recent years has grown to span machine learning, artificial intelligence, and causal reasoning. Across two decades in industry, academia, and government — from General Motors to the Air Force Research Laboratory, a faculty appointment at Mississippi State, and the Army Research Laboratory — the common thread has been modeling in every form — physics-based simulation, machine learning, and data science — understanding mechanisms at one scale to predict behavior at the next.
As a senior leader at DEVCOM ARL, I founded ARL Central, building the laboratory's Midwest presence from a single researcher to 30+ scientists and $40M/year in collaborative research programs. I led the Army Artificial Intelligence Innovation Institute (A2I2) — a collaborative research alliance spanning 116 institutions — through its Phase I capstone and Phase II architecture, and I spent a year of sabbatical at Northwestern and the University of Chicago studying the science of science: how teams, citations, and institutions shape research impact.
I am equally proud of the classroom record: I created and taught "Machine Learning for Everyone: May The Fourth Be With You" — six annual iterations reaching 3,300+ participants from 173+ Army organizations — and co-developed "AI for Soldiers," an in-residence Army HQ Strategic Broadening Seminar bringing AI literacy directly to Soldiers. I hold a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Tech, where my dissertation received the campus-wide Sigma Xi Best PhD Thesis Award.
Research Areas
ICME & Computational Materials Science
Integrated Computational Materials Engineering — atomistic simulation of grain boundaries, dislocation nucleation, and nanocrystalline alloys, linked upward into alloy design and materials discovery.
Solid Mechanics & Multiscale Modeling
Deformation, plasticity, and failure across scales — from dislocation mechanics and grain boundary deformation to polymers, ceramics, and the mechanics of engineered microstructures.
Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence
ML applied well beyond materials — manufacturing, information science, and Army decision-making — with current foundational research in causal reasoning and causal inference for AI systems.
Science of Science
Computational social science applied to research itself: bibliometrics, team science, and scientific impact — quantifying how institutions and collaborations shape discovery, and using it to steer R&D strategy.
AI Education & Workforce Development
Designing and teaching AI/ML curricula for scientists, engineers, and Soldiers — intuition-first, spreadsheet-level mechanics that make the math visible, delivered at DoD scale.
Selected Publications
Highlights from 100+ peer-reviewed publications, emphasizing first-author and corresponding-author work cited hundreds of times.
Full publication record on Google Scholar and ORCID.
Teaching & Outreach
Machine Learning for Everyone
"May The Fourth Be With You" — a Star Wars–themed introduction to machine learning, taught six years running to participants from 173+ Army organizations worldwide. Course archive with Excel-based algorithm workbooks.
AI for Soldiers
In-residence AI course for mid-career Army officers, NCOs, and warrant officers, delivered as an Army HQ Strategic Broadening Seminar — the only SBS course selected by Army HQ that is taught within the federal government.
LAMMPS Tutorials for Beginners
Jupyter-notebook tutorials for molecular dynamics with LAMMPS — lattice energy, deformation, grain boundaries, and fracture — used by students and researchers worldwide.
Recognition
- ARL Fellow — among the Army Research Laboratory's most eminent scientific leaders
- Fellow, ASM International — the world's largest association of materials scientists and engineers
- Fellow, ASME — American Society of Mechanical Engineers
- ASM Silver Medal — for mid-career excellence in research and service
- DEVCOM ARL Leadership Award — for standing up and leading laboratory-wide workforce initiatives
- DEVCOM ARL Award for Impactful Communication — for leadership and innovation in AI/ML education
- Sigma Xi Best PhD Thesis Award — Georgia Institute of Technology