Benjamin Afflerbach, Ph.D. Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics & Engineering Berndt Hall 605 btafflerbach@fortlewis.edu Expertise: Computational materials design Ab-initio and atomistic molecular dynamics Applied machine learning property modeling Education: Ph.D., Materials Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2021 B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, 2014 About Dr. Benjamin Afflerbach Dr. Benjamin Afflerbach is a visiting instructor of Physics & Engineering at Fort Lewis College. He has worked for the past four years as director of an undergraduate research program, the Informatics Skunkworks, which has impacted over 500 students through group project-based research projects centered around various applied machine learning topics. Additionally, his research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison employed computational materials design methods including ab-initio and atomistic simulations to identify novel materials with a focus on bulk metallic glasses. He has also developed machine learning approaches to accelerate the materials design process with accessible featurization techniques. Selected Publications Schultz, L. E., Afflerbach, B. T., Voyles, P. M., & Morgan, D. (2025). Journal of Materiomics, 11(4), 100964. Afflerbach, B. T., Fathema, N., Gillian-Daniel, A. L., Crone, W. C., & Morgan, D. (2022) ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition. Aug 23, 2022 Afflerbach B. T., Francis C., Schultz L. E., Erickson J., Meschke V., Strand E., Ward L., Perepezko J., Thoma D., Voyles P. M., Szlufarska I., Morgan D. (2022) Chem. Mat. 2022, 34, 2945−2954.