Sample DSOFT Short Course Proposal
1.Title: Computing Soft Matter Across Scales
2. Nominator information: Justin Burton, Emory University, dsoftprogramchair@aps.org
3. Organizers: Justin Burton, Jacinta Conrad
4. Description: Computational methods are essential for soft matter, spanning from microscale to continuum simulations. Our community relies heavily on them to predict the emergent complexity of soft matter, and provide rigorous tests for theories and quantities that are difficult to control or measure in experiments. However, due to advances in computational power and artificial intelligence, modern computational methods have advanced rapidly, both in substance and in methodology. For scientists being introduced to the field, knowing how to get started, and more importantly, what computational method is the right one to use can be daunting. In this day-long course, participants will learn about several key tools and how to use them, including molecular dynamics, finite elements, and shape optimization techniques. This short course will be engaging and collaborative. Participants will be led through examples in real-time on their laptops and provided the tools they need to get started with many computational methods.
5. Target audience: Who Should Attend? Anyone who studies liquids, colloids, polymers, biomaterials, granular materials, liquid crystals, and all topics of soft matter physics. This short course is built for students and postdocs who want to form a solid foundation for their computational research. It should also be strongly considered by experimentalists and theorists up to the faculty level who want to understand the common computational methods that their collaborators use.