Keivan Esfarjani is a Computational Materials Scientist with interests in solid-state energy conversion and storage, transport phenomena, and thermoelectric materials. He is the leading expert in modeling and computation of thermal transport properties of materials. He was one of the pioneers in introducing the first-principles approach to compute phonon relaxation rates and deduce thermal conductivity from solving the Boltzmann transport equation for phonons. His work on silicon showed for the first time the wide distribution of phonon mean free paths, which had previously been assumed to be narrow. He has also extended this approach to treat the effect of electron–phonon interactions on thermal conductivity of doped semiconductors. His other research has focused on properties of carbon nanotubes and fullerenes, cross-plane thermionic transport in 2D layered materials, and cluster formation and stability.