Dr. Vesselin I. Yamakov is Research Scientist Lead at Analytical Mechanics Associates in Hampton, Virginia, and works as a NASA contractor at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) in support of the computational materials effort. He received his M.S. (1991) from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and his Ph.D. (1998) at the Institute for Physical Chemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Science. Dr. Yamakov spent four years (1999-2003) as a post-doctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, IL before joining NASA (LaRC) as a contractor. He is a recipient of two NASA Group Achievements Awards (2015, 2020), the Administrator’s Gears of Government Team Award (2019), and the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2021). His current research interest is in developing computational models to investigate new materials and structures that are of interest for aero and space applications.