Pharmaceutical Design
In his classroom, Andrew Paluch, Ph.D., is not only teaching classical theories but is also training new generation of supercomputer-savvy scientists.
Raman Spectra
From solar cells to electronic tools, new devices are created every day by combining two or more different materials to create a heterogenous interface. Those interfaces play a major role in how those devices function.
Computational Chemistry
Janet Del Bene, Ph.D., has dedicated five decades to research in theoretical chemistry. And she’s done it with, and without, the help of the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Of course, the only time she didn’t use the Center’s high performance computing capabilities was when they didn’t exist.
Water Desalination
Over 96 percent of the water on Earth is undrinkable and unusable for most human purposes. While removing salt from ocean water is possible, desalinated water costs up to ten times more than typical groundwater.
Industrial Explosives
Alfred Nobel, namesake of the Nobel Prizes, was originally known for inventing dynamite, though not fondly, as he found out. When his brother died, a newspaper erroneously reported Alfred’s death. The obituary chided him for his invention that, especially at that time, often proved deadly.
Glass Transition
One of the grand challenges in materials science is discovering exactly how materials form glasses.
David Simmons, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the University of Akron’s Department of Polymer Engineering is trying to understand at the fundamental level the relationship between the molecular structure and the way a material forms a glass.
Electrolyte Design
To enable the rational design of future materials, such as batteries that could more safely and efficiently power electric cars, a research group at The Ohio State University is developing an innovative modeling approach to reveal the details of the microscopic structure and dynamics in microphase-separated polymer electrolytes.
Drag Reduction
Bharat Bhushan, Ph.D., was on sabbatical at Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne, Switzerland in 2005 when a transformation began.
After reading an article in a trade magazine on the lotus leaf’s water repellant properties, Bhushan’s industrial research launched down a greener, livelier new path.
The Kondo Effect
Several years ago, a Physics World article posed the question, “Why would anyone still want to study a physical phenomenon that was discovered in the 1930s, explained in the 1960s and has been the subject of numerous reviews since the 1970s?”
Flavor Physics
The quest to understand the fundamental building blocks of nature and their interactions is one of the longest-running and most ambitious of human endeavors.