About
Kinston Ackölf
Materials informatician, scientist, and engineer. PhD candidate (ABD) in Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Utah, in the Sparks Group with Prof. Taylor D. Sparks. Expected to graduate December 2026.
I publish as Kinston A. Ackölf; some records and documents list me as Kinston T. Wong. Both are me.
What I work on
My research is in materials information science: the architecture of autonomous materials research systems. I'm building HaikuSDL, a modular, lean-agile self-driving laboratory (SDL) that connects laboratory policies, and how they're executed, to decisions in materials science and chemistry using data collected while experiments run.
The question running through my articles is how a self-driving lab should transfer knowledge between sources whose fidelity is known only qualitatively: DFT at different levels, machine-learned interatomic potentials, molecular dynamics, experimental compilations, and materials databases. When can a borrowed source be trusted, and what does reusing it save?
Before the PhD I worked in industry as an engineer. See Engineering for my experience, education, and skills.
Research at a glance
All articles ↗Sources
Borrowed sources lend
rate them, tally savings made
trust, verify, spend
Updates
New evidence lands
laws revised, history kept
audit trail expands
Group
Many minds, shared loop
insect brains steer research teams
deciding as group
Owners
Knowledge, owned apart
disclose minimal, metered
billing plays its part
Publications
Google Scholar ↗Outside the lab
When I'm not thinking about atoms and bits, I'm making music and dancing as KinzAc, training in sports, or making things by hand.
Find me online
Always happy to talk about collaborations on self-driving labs and materials informatics.