Our group received funding from Stanadyne for a summer project dedicated to FEM-based modeling of fuel injector operation. This project will involve cooperation between our “senior” graduate students and some new SoE undergraduates who are just getting their feet wet with serious research.
Group activities
Rebecca Stern is graduating from UConn
| Our undergraduate student Rebecca Stern is graduating from UConn and will continue her studies in grad school at UC Berkeley. Furthermore, Rebecca’s Senior Design Project entitled “Quantum Mechanical pKa Predictions of Drug-Like Molecules” and conducted in collaboration with our colleagues from Pfizer Inc. won first prize for its final presentation. Photo below is taken during the poster presentation of this project at UConn SoE “Capstone Design” day and shows our Pfizer research team all together. Left to right: Rebecca Stern, Lydie Louis and Ayana Ghosh. |
 |
Undergraduate student, Rebecca Stern, featured on UConn MSE web site
A new article featuring Rebecca Stern, who is currently an MSE senior doing research with the group, was recently published on the MSE web site. Congratulations to Rebecca!
New graduate student, Ayana Ghosh, joins the group
| The group welcomes new graduate student, Ayana Ghosh, who comes to us from University of Michigan-Flint and, lately, New Mexico State University. Ayana will be working on the “In Silico Solid Form Design” collaborative project that was recently seeded by Pfizer Inc. and UConn MSE. |  |
Lydie Louis took Western Europe by storm this August
winning the best poster prize at the — prestigious and selective! — Paris International School on Advanced Computational Materials Science (PISACMS) for her work on epitaxial phases of Ruddlesden-Popper-type Ba2ZrO4. See proof below and read the new article about this and other Lydie’s accomplishments at UConn MSE department web page.
Serge and John Mangeri visit Argonne National Lab in the summer
| This summer, John Mangeri participated in the highly selective Givens Associates program conducted by the Mathematics and Computer Science division at Argonne, working on the Ferret code development for more than two months. John’s main goal was to implement and test coupling among the polar, elastic and electrostatic degrees of freedom. This is now done, as shown in the picture below, which depicts an (exaggerated) elastic distortion in a 60 x 60 nm PbTiO3 plate with in-plane polar domains. Serge joined John at Argonne for a few weeks, providing mostly cheerleading support for the project. | |
 |
John Mangeri passes his PhD candidacy test
On May 14th John successfully passed his last (oral) examination for the PhD candidacy at the Physics department. Big congratulations to John.
Lydie Louis to participate in the Summer Computational school in Paris
Lydie has been selected to participate in Paris International School on Advanced Computational Materials Science (PISACMS2015) — a week long affair that will take place at Sorbonne in August of 2015. The school will cover a broad range of computational techniques from classical molecular dynamics to quantum Monte-Carlo. Congratulations to Lydie!
John Mangeri receives a Givens fellowship to visit Argonne in the summer
John has received the Givens Associate Program appointment at the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Lab to continue his work on the Ferret code that is developed by our group and ANL collaborators to conduct mesoscale level simulations of ferroic materials and nanostructures. Congratulations to John!
Group members present at the American Physical Society March meeting
Krishna Pitike, John Mangeri and Serge Nakhmanson presented their research projects at the APS March meeting in San Antonio. Serge’s presentation slides on layered oxides with new functionalities are available here (courtesy of the APS).