November 19, 2013, by Graham Kendall

The Role of Simulation in Addressing Technological Problems: Public Lecture by Robin Grimes

UNMC were recently invited (18th Nov 2013) to host a public lecture by Professor Robin Grimes, (or his Imperial College home page) who is the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Chief Scientific Advisor and Professor of Materials Physics at Imperial College.

This was a great honour for us, and we were delighted to do so.

The topic of his talk was:

Our understanding of materials performance is based on experimental data.  We use it to inform predictive models that allow us to develop better materials and sometimes even new materials.  Experimental data is, however, often challenging to obtain either because the controlling factor takes place on time scales or length scales that are challenging or the systems themselves are hazardous.  In these circumstances computer simulations can be exceptionally useful.  We use the results of simulation in four different ways, either to provide property values for existing models and further analyze experimental values, to ‘check’ or ‘test’ existing assumptions, to improve existing models by ‘developing’ the physical models or sometimes even to develop totally new models, using the simulations to ‘discover’ or ‘identify’ the physics/chemistry behind the process.  In this seminar we will consider each of these in turn, to see how high performance computing can add value to the development of materials.

We took the opportunity to ask him some questions about the UK research landscape, in his role as the Chief Scientific Advisor and also squeezed in a quick tour of the campus.

We’d like to thank Ching at the High Commission for inviting us to host this public lecture. A big thank you also goes to the local organising team and the photographer. Without them, the event would not have taken place; at least not in the well organsied way that it did.

We have put some pictures below, but there are more available here.

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