Lab tour, with the voice of Paul Rudnicki.

Our motivation

We are an interdisciplinary group of physicists, engineers, chemists, and material scientists aiming to bridge the gap between molecules and macroscopic material performance. Fundamental to our work is the development of molecular scale understanding to the structure, morphology, and functionality of soft materials, with a focus on polymers. Molecular modeling and statistical mechanics are essential to our researches. The projects are inspired by experiments of colleagues and are driven by curiosity.

Our tools

We do both coarse-grained (LAMMPS) and atomistic (Gromacs) molecular dynamics simulations, and develop Monte Carlo code occasionally, in addition to analytical theories. Our favorite scripting language is Python and our prototyping language is Mathematica, both of them accessible to Stanford students. We write in TeX.

Interested in joining us?

We do not expect prior simulation and research experience from you. If you are dedicated, that can always be learned, and we are more than happy to help you develop the skills! Curiosity, however, is crucial. We hope you are curious enough to work hard and learn, and bold enough to explore the unknown. We delight ourselves in coding, math, science — figuring things out and having fun.

Our supporters

We are grateful to the supports from NSF, DOE, ACS PRF Fund, 3M Corporation, Hellman Foundation, Stanford BioX, Precourt Institute, and StorageX Initiative.

Recent updates

6/11: Group lunch celebrating the graduation of three undergraduates Xiaomian, Sathya, and Doug. They are all going to the graduate school pursuing the PhD, in different disciplines (ChE, MSE, Physics). Best wishes in the new journey!

6/7: Congratulations to Aditya on receiving the department teaching award for his exemplary tutoring efforts in CHEMENG 110B.

5/29: Xiaomian's honor thesis received Filestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research! Congratulations to Xiaomian, and thanks Doug for the mentoring efforts!

4/20: Congratulations to Xiaomian on receiving the Terman Award 2024!

3/3: Jacob, Srikant, Xiaomian and Jian attended the APS March meeting in Minneapolis.

2/28: Our perspective on the idea and applications behind the invariant degree of polymerization is online.

1/11: Elizabeth started to rotate in our group. Welcome!

12/8: Adi passed the Qual exam; now officially a candidate. The group gathered in Alpine Inn. Happy holidays, everyone!

12/7: Victoria gives very clean a poster reporting the results on how chain stiffness affects cluster dimension.

10/13: Wes's ribbon-like chain (RLC) theory on conformational statistics of conjugated polymers is selected as ACS Editors' Choice by Macromolecules!

9/28: Theo and Jacob both presented in Bio-X symposium. Nice opportunity for networking.

Contact

Jian Qin
443 Via Ortega
Stanford, CA 94305
jianq [at] stanford.edu

Links

  • Stanford ChE
  • ChE intranet
  • Sherlock cluster
  • Hume writing center
  • Milner Mathematica tutorial