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.

Several members of the lab traveled to present and promote their newest research results at conferences throughout Germany:

Michael Engel presented the opening lecture at the ICMS conference “Quasicrystals: pattern formation and aperiodic order” in Edinburgh. This conference brought together four different research communities to advance the understanding of quasicrystals and aperiodic order: (i) quasicrystals in materials science, (ii) quasicrystals in soft matter, (iii) quasicrystals in partial differential equations and (iv) quasicrystals in aperiodic tilings.

Michael Engel provided an overview talk about the theory and simulation of quasicrystals at the workshop of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 762: Functionality of Oxide Interfaces at Benedictine Abbey of Frauenwörth. The Benedictine abbey of Frauenwörth was founded by the Duke of Bavaria Tassilo III around 772 AD.

The island Frauenchiemsee with the abbey Frauenwörth from the shore of Chiemsee. It was quite cold (-10C) and crystallization at the liquid-air interface was observed (coincidentally a topic of the scientific talk).