Yaroslav Mudryk received his MS degree in Chemistry with Honors (1997) and his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry (2002) from Ivan Franko National University in L’viv, Ukraine. After spending several years as a staff scientist at the L’viv National University and as a visiting scientist at the Vienna University (Austria), he joined Karl Gschneidner’s group at Ames Laboratory as a post-doctoral associate in 2004.  Currently he is a staff scientist (Scientist III) and a principal investigator at Ames National Laboratory, Division of Materials Science and Engineering, studying magnetic rare earth materials.

Mudryk’s research focuses on physical behaviors of rare earth - based intermetallic compounds and magnetic refrigeration. The areas of his expertise include: a) experimental synthesis and characterization of rare earth intermetallic alloys and compounds, including single crystal growth; b) relationships between composition, structure and properties of 4f-based materials showing extraordinary response to external stimuli; c) coupled magnetic and structural solid-state transformations that lead to giant magnetocaloric effect, magnetostriction, and magnetoresistance phenomena; d) ferro- and ferrimagnetic lanthanide intermetallics with near-zero net magnetic moment. He also leads an effort to use machine learning for the discovery and physical behavior analysis of rare earth intermetallic alloys and compounds.