Biological, soft matter and materials physics

General. Computational methods have become an indispensable tool within quantitative sciences such as physics, chemistry, and materials science. Today's research relies heavily on computational modeling, both for predicting and for obtaining a more thorough understanding of complex chemical reactions, collective phenomena in condensed matter, and material properties. Although computational materials science is a highly interdisciplinary area encompassing many different fields, it is an area characterised by one common working philosophy: compute the large from knowing the small. When modelling a system, we teach our computer codes the rules for the interaction between small units. Such elementary units can range from electrons and nuclei to finite, coarse-grained elements containing billions of atoms. Accordingly, the rules for interaction between such units ranges from Coulomb's law and the Schrodinger equation to Hooke's Law and other macroscopic relations. Once a model is programmed, we let the computers predict the aggregate behaviour of all units. The purpose of such simulations ranges from obtaining qualitative insight into collective phenomena to calculating such quantitatively well-defined material properties as the mechanical hardness of a solid as a function of its chemical composition. The computational research at the Applied Mathematics Department is primarily in soft condensed matter physics and physical chemistry. Examples of current interest are microfluidic devices, colloidal systems, nanotribology including friction in biological systems, ceramics under high pressure, quantum-mechanical many-body systems, quantum chemistry, polymers, liquid crystals, disordered systems, and phase transitions.

Research groups.

• Computational materials science: Colin Denniston.
  • Official web page
  • Personal

• Soft Matter and Biological Physics: Mikko Karttunen
  • Official web page
  • Group
  • Personal
• Allan B. MacIsaac
  • Official web page
  • Personal

Cross-appointed faculty at other departments.

• Viktor N. Staroverov [Official web page]
• S. Constas, Dept. of Chemistry. [Official web page]

Representative publications:

1. Under the influence of alcohol: The effect of ethanol and methanol on lipid bilayers
   Michael Patra, Emppu Salonen, Emma Terama, Ilpo Vattulainen, Roland Faller, Bryan W. Lee, Juha Holopainen, and Mikko Karttunen
   Biophys. J. 90, 1121-1135 (2006).
   [cond-mat/0408122] [Online] [Movies of ethanol inteacting with a membrane]

2. On the orientation of lamellar block copolymer phases under shear
   B. Fraser, C. Denniston, and M. H. Müser
   J. Chem. Phys. 124, 104902 (2006)

3. Significance of Sterol Structural Specificity: Desmosterol cannot replace cholesterol in lipid rafts,
   Saara Vainio, Maurice Jansen, Mirkka Koivusalo, Tomasz Rog, Mikko Karttunen, Ilpo Vattulainen, and Elina Ikonen,
   J. Biol. Chem. 281, 348-355, (2006).
   [online]

4. Molecular mechanisms for the functionality of lubricant additives
   N.J. Mosey, M.H. Müser, and T. K. Woo
   Science 307, 1612-1615 (2005).

5. Hydrodynamics of topological defects in nematic liquid crystals
   G. Toth, C. Denniston and J. M. Yeomans,
   Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 105504 (2002)