Achievement

Alisha Lewis is a first year IGERT trainee in Chemistry co-supervised by Mathew Maye (chemistry) and Mark Bowick (physics). She is working on the self-assembly of nano-objects into well-defined clusters with a predetermined number and symmetry. Her project involves not only experimentally constructing such clusters from a bottom-up chemical approach, but also multiscale modeling of assembly dynamics. To date, with help from research associate Rastko Sknepnek (physics) she has constructed a molecular dynamics workstation that employs graphics processors (GPU) to perform coarse grain molecular dynamics using a recently developed HOOMD (Highly Optimized Object-oriented Many-particle Dynamics-Blue Edition). She is now encoding a simulation of a binary fluid, which will mimic the assembly system. This summer Alisha will attend the International conference "Programmable Self-Assembly of Matter" hosted by NYU and BNL, where she will be able to interact with top scientists in the field.