News

By Dr. Ridwan Sakidja

• Yes, Virtual Reality for Physics Education Is Coming!  As a Co-PI, I'm very pleased to initiate a pilot project in curriculum innovations with Ms. Becky Baker (PI) and Dr. Amir H. Behzadan (Co-PI). The project is titled "Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) Technologies for Introductory Physics Education". Many thanks to the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning for supporting our project!

 

 

 

• Having a little fun with my "highly attentive" MAT790 students: The Mannequin Challenge with classic style! 

• Our Physics and Materials Science students volunteered at Ozarks Food Harvest along with other students mostly from Missouri State. OFH serves charities that provide meals to people struggling with hunger in Southwest Missouri. Yes, we are proud to make our Missouri Statement!

• Paul Simanjuntak gave his first research talk on the development of many-body potentials for TiN-Al nanolaminates at MS&T 2016 in Salt Lake City:

OTHER PICTURES AT THE CONFERENCE & UNIV OF UTAH :

 

• Jesse Underwood won 1st place at the oral presentation competition in Physics for undergraduates at INBRE 2016. The title of his talk: ""Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the Mechanical and Structural Properties of Silica and Aluminosilica Mesoporous Materials", a collaborative work between our group and Dr. Mayanovic's group (co-authored by Dayton G. Kizzire, Jamie Thomas, me and Dr. M). Congratulation Jesse!

Photo Credit: Denise Greathouse at Flikr

• Shafiqul Islam gave a poster presentation on the atomistic modeling of Li mobility in advanced Li-ion electrolytes at  the St. Louis Regional Materials Network Meeting. The meeting between Wash. Univ., Missouri S&T, Univ. Missouri-St. Louis, Missouri State University and Univ. Missouri-Columbia was organized by the Institute of Materials Science & Engineering (Director: Dr. Katharine Flores) at Wash. U. Shafiq's work is a collaboration between our group and Dr. Saibal Mitra.

 

• Kudos to the University's Publications (Director: Ms. Stacey L. Funderburk) that photographed our microscope session on meso-porous structures. This exciting materials research field is a part of collaborative work between us, Dr. Mayanovic's research group and our colleagues at SUNY Poly, Cornell & Lehigh Universities (follow this link to our latest collaborative work). Many thanks to Anthony Pelton that helped us run the Dept's high-resolution Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). A maximum magnification of 1.5 million X. Ain't too shabby!

Photo credit : University Publications (low-res. image version)

    

• Dr. "M" (Mayanovic) and I tried to bring our "A" game to the Majors Fair - on full (digital) display:

Photo credit @PlavchanPeter

• Promoting Computational Physics & Materials Science at MSU Showcase and CNAS Student Expo with the help from Boomer the Bear, Society of Physics Students (SPS) and Pokemon!

 

WITH THE BOOMER THE BEAR

         

WITH THE POKEMON

• On Thu., July 28^th 2016, Tony (Anthony Ascone) successfully defended his Master's thesis:

  MDM2 CASE STUDY: COMPUTATIONAL PROTOCOL UTILIZING PROTEIN FLEXIBILITY IMPROVES LIGAND BINDING MODE PREDICTIONS

  Congratulation Mr. Ascone!

• Zach Leuty was selected as one of 2016-2017 NASA interns through MSU's Missouri Space Grant Consortium. Zach's project will be to model the physical and thermal properties of a series of crystalline materials designed for the environmental barrier coating (EBC), namely Y₂SiO₅, Yb₂SiO₅, Y₂Si₂O₇ and Yb₂SiO₇.

 

• Poster presentations by Physics undergrads on computational materials science & protective coatings at CNAS Undergraduate Research Day.  Great job everyone!

Check out also photos from CNAS website :

Gavin Hester  : *** 1^st PLACE FOR PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & MATERIALS SCIENCE  ***

Molecular Dynamics Study of Lithium-Ion Conducting Phosphate Glass

Zach Leuty :

Comparison of Aluminide Diffusion Coatings on Various Steel Substrates Synthesized by Pack Cementation

Kent Mastroianni :

The Effects of Nanoparticle Size on the Properties of Simulated SiO₂ Melts

Tim Stillings :

A Report on Atomistic Modeling of Bonding in Carbon-based Nanostructures

Jamie Thomas :

Computational Modeling of the Mechanical and Hydrothermal Stabilities of Mesoporous Materials

 

2015

• Zach Leuty gave an invited student presentation at INBRE 2015 on low-temperature processed aluminide coatings:

(S/O to DeniseGreathouse on Flikr for this great photo)

• Anthony Ascone gave a poster presentation at INBRE 2015 on a new docking protocol for MDM2 onco-protein:

 

• Daniel Soden gave a poster presentation at INBRE 2015 on the interaction between ZnO and ATP:

• Hayley Osman is going to pursue a Ph.D program in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Colorado beginning this upcoming Fall of 2015. During this Summer, Hayley has been greatly instrumental in initiating our atomistic-modeling work on meso-porous silica glass in a close collaboration with Dr. Mayanovic's research group. We wish Hayley all the best!  Be Boulder!

• Anthony (Tony) Ascone was selected as one of 25 graduate students/postdocs that participated in Hands-on Workshop on Computational Biophysics held at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center on June 1-5, 2015. This workshop covered a wide range of physical models and computational approaches for the simulation of biological systems.

• Apoorv Negi has been working as an intern at Brewer Science during this Summer focusing on modeling a variety of physical properties of assemblies of CNT's through atomistic simulations.  The internship is a part of the on-going collaboration between our group with Brewer Science that continues to champion innovative internships geared especially for STEM education. 

• Timothy (Tim) Stillings and Zachary (Zach) Leuty  have been selected as 2015-2016 NASA interns through MSU's Missouri Space Grant Consortium. Tim will be working on modeling the interactions between Carbon-based nano materials. Zach's project will combine experiments and thermodynamic modeling to optimize the low-temperature synthesis of corrosion-resistant coatings for high-strength steels.

Tim                                      Zach