Dr. Rakita started as a faculty member at the Department of Materials Engineering at BGU in 2022. He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Ben Gurion University, his M.Sc. at Tel Aviv University, and his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He then moved to the USA as an EFRC (Energy Frontier Research Centers) fellow to pursue post-doctorate research at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, New York City with Professor Simon Billinge, where he was investigating data-science methodologies for advanced study in materials science. In the last year of his postdoc, Dr. Rakita was invited as a visiting scientist by Prof. Mitra Taheri from the Materials Science and Engineering department at Johns Hopkins University to study the local structure of high-entropy alloys.
The research of the Rakita-Lab focuses on the implementation of data-driven methods for structural analysis of complex material systems at the nano-scale, such as functional covalent glasses, phase-change materials, and multi-component alloys. His research explores the foundations for rationalizing the development of materials for neuromorphic computation, thermal energy recycling, photovoltaic energy harvesting, and electrochemical energy storage.