Rationale
Throughout history, the development of technology-enabling materials has been carried out using mostly experimental approaches. Thanks to recent advances at the theory, software and hardware level, computational materials science has emerged as an extremely valuable tool in the development of new materials.
In light of the very promising future of the field and the current focus of IIMEC on Multi-functional Materials for Energy Conversion, we decided to organize a Winter School on Computational Materials Science.
Dates: January 8th-17th, 2012 in College Station, TX
Organizers:
Raymundo Arroyave (lead), Dimitris Lagoudas, Etienne Patoor, Amine Benzerga, Tahir Cagin, Darren Hartl
IIMEC Winter School
Goal
The goal of this week-and-a-half Winter School is to introduce some of the most important methods within the Computational Materials Science toolkit to undergraduate and graduate students interested in this emerging field. Since materials science studies multi-scale phenomena, this Winter School will offer modules focused on different methods used to investigate physical phenomena at multiple scales.
Organization and Topics
Topics will be organized in a top-down approach and connections will be made between different time and length scales.
Themes will be organized as follows:
1. Mechanical response of materials: from the continuum to the mesoscale
2. Computational thermodynamics of materials
3. Evolution of microstructure at the mesoscale
4. Atomistic simulations: classical potentials
5. Calculating materials properties at the electronic structure levels
The School will consist of theoretical modules offered by experts in the field, followed by practical laboratories where the participants will have the opportunity of using the methods reviewed to simulate specific material phenomena. The newly established IIMEC Computer Cluster acquired with financial support from the National Science Foundation will be used during the hands-on sessions.