Introduction

The Electronic Structure Group (ESG) at the Department of Physics in University of Missouri-Kansas City is led by Professor Wai-Yim Ching.  The ESG team consists of post-doctoral fellows (Paul Rulis), visiting scientists, Ph.D students (Hongzhi Yao, Sitaram Aryal) and other graduate (Lei Liang, Liaoyuan Wang, Yuxiang Mo) and undergraduate students.  The purpose of the group is to study the fundamental structures and properties of different types of materials by theoretical and computational means.  The ESG has established extensive collaborations with other research groups both in the US and abroad.  The ESG has been supported by grants from the DOE, NSF, UMKC and NEDO.