I came to work at MSU with my old friend and colleague, Keith Promislow. I worked with Keith when he was in Vancouver at SFU for many years on a fuel cell modelling project. I have also had a chance to get to know Andrew Christlieb, another professor here who like me is a numerical analyst but who seems to know all the things I don't so I have learned a lot. I have also had a chance to get to know two of their post-docs, Nir Gavesh and Zhengfu Xu who are very bright guys.
I brought a bunch of projects with me, things I thought I could make progress on with the kind of uninterrupted time I have here. I started one of those yesterday and did something useful (I think) but I have mainly spent time working on numerical methods for a problem they are looking at here, modelling structure formation in functionalized polymers. These materials have nanoscale structures that influence their performance in things like fuel cells and solar cells. Predicting their structure based on their chemistry and how they are processed would be a major contribution and the group here has made some real progress. I have been looking at numerical approaches (for easy but related problems) that might be useful as they look at more complicated chemistry.
Actually the point of this post was going to be to show the movies of the computations I have done on the test models (they are kind of cool, mesmerizing like a lava lamp - in shades of blue to red, my favourite). This blog host doesn't seem to want to let me upload the movies, so you'll have to look at some stills from two of the models I have working.
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