The Engellab continued a scientific exchange with the group or Sudeep Punnathanam at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). As part of this Indo-German exchange, multiple mutual visits were organized in 2023 and 2024.

IISc is a leading research university located in Bengaluru (Karnataka). The research of our Indian partner concerns Enhanced Computational Research in Phase Transitions (EnCRIPT). The exchange was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD — Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) over two years.

Our visitors on top of Fahnenstein in Tüchersfeld.
Michael Engel behind the Chemical Engineering building at IISc.

Michael Engel attends the 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Diego to present present his research and promote our department of Chemical and Biological Engineering of FAU. The department has an evening reception and participates in the recruitment fair.

Michael Engel visited the Computational Statistical Physics lab of Masaharu Isobe at Nagoya Institute of Technology University from July 4 to July 17. NITech is a partner university of FAU in Japan. Discussions advanced our understanding of the hard disc problems, in particular using event-chain methods and Voronoi decomposition.

Michael Engel presents at NITech on structure formation in particulate matter.
Mount Fuji from the Shinkansen from Nagoya to Tokyo.

For the time June to November 2024 Praveen Bommineni from the National Institute of Technology Warangal (India) is conducting research in our group. A focus of joint research is colloidal crystallization in confinement. The research is funded through the guest research program of FAU and the CRC 1411. Praveen has been a postdoctoral research in the group and returning for a sabbatical.

Welcome to Erlangen!

Carlos Lange Bassani received the Best Poster Award at the International Conference on Gas Hydrates – ICGH10 (https://icgh10.com/) held in Singapore from 9 to 14 of July, 2023, for the work entitled “A New Approach for Gas Hydrate Slurry Flow based on a Multiscale Model for Multiphase Flow”, in collaboration with Colorado School of Mines/USA, Mines Saint-Etienne/France, and UTFPR/Brazil.

ICGH is the most important conference in the field of gas clathrate hydrates and takes place every 3 years. Carlos Lange Bassani acknowledges the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the sponsorship of his postdoctoral fellowship and the Emerging Talents Initiative of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg that allowed the participation in the conference.

Prof. Conference chair Prof. Praveen Linga presents the award to Carlos Lange Bassani.

We would like to announce the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (KITP) conference entitled:

Structure Design and Emerging Phenomena in Nanoparticle Assemblies: What’s next?

Time: May 15-18, 2023
Location: University of California, Santa Barbara
Registration deadline: April 16, 2023

The conference aims to provide a coherent view of the current state of the field, bringing together researchers with different expertise and backgrounds. It should catalyze the development of new methods, both theoretical, computational and experimental, and define the basic science in this field.

More information can be found at: https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/nanoassembly-c23

The workshop organizers

Michael Engel, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Laura Na Liu, Universität Stuttgart
Monica Olvera, Northwestern University
Eran Rabani, University of California, Berkeley
Alex Travesset, Iowa State University

We* are coordinating a program at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara in the period Mar 27, 2023 — May 19, 2023 on the topic nanoparticle assemblies. Applications can still be entered here:

Nanoparticle Assemblies: A New Form of Matter with Classical Structure and Quantum Function

*Coordinators: Michael Engel, Laura Na Liu, Monica Olvera de la Cruz, Eran Rabani, and Alex Travesset

Materials whose elementary building blocks are nanoparticles with dimensions between a few and hundred nanometers, such as nanocrystals and colloids, instead of atoms or molecules, provide a new form of matter, with many properties, both in structure and function, that are not achievable with traditional materials. This raises a number of new fundamental questions such as:

  • What is the minimal physical description at the nanoscale?
  • How to discover new assemblies?
  • What are the effects or properties for these new materials and the characterization of equilibrium and metastability?

The program will bring together scientists from diverse communities: physicists, chemists and material scientists in an effort to address the emerging fundamental questions and long-term prospects of this young field. It will develop collaborative efforts in the areas of programmable assembly, structure prediction, inverse methods, electronic properties and new functional materials, with the goal of becoming a reference for the exciting future ahead.

Michael Engel attended the 50 year celebration of CECAM in Lausanne, Switzerland. CECAM (Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire) is the longest standing European Institute for the promotion of fundamental research on advanced computational methods and their application to problems in frontier areas of science and technology.

As the conference demonstrated, simulations are more relevant than ever due to advances in computer hardware and, even more importantly, advances in simulation algorithms. Recent trends particularly well covered in Lausanne were the topics ‘Machine Learning’ and ‘Neural Networks’. Even though being a blind follower can easily lead astray, there are huge possibilities with the right strategy.

Lake Geneva from Lausanne harbor at sunset.