General Colloquium
December 7 - 4:00pm Phys 223
(Coffee at 3:30p.m. in room 242)
December 7 - 4:00pm Phys 223
(Coffee at 3:30p.m. in room 242)
Dr. Steven Richardson
Department of Electrical Engineering and Materials Science Research Center
Howard University
School of Engineering
Title: "Using Supercomputers to Design and Model Novel Materials and Molecules"
Abstract:
Recent advances in computational materials science and theoretical condensed matter physics, coupled with the power and speeds of modern supercomputers, have enabled scientists and engineers to design and study novel materials from a first-principles or ab initio viewpoint. Such calculations have become increasingly useful in their ability both to explain experimental properties of materials and to predict novel materials and molecules. As an example of the progress in this exciting field, we will discuss some of our recent work on the structural properties of the energetic material, solid cubane, and the formation of defects in zinc.
Steven L. Richardson is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and principal investigator in the Materials Science Research Center of Excellence at Howard University. His research interests are in the areas of computational materials science and computational chemistry.
Dr. Richardson did his undergraduate work in chemistry at Columbia University and received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from The Ohio State University in 1983. He was a Chancellor's Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow and Ford foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Unvisited of California at Berkeley and has worked as a senior research scientist at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York and has served as a program director of the condensed matter theory program at NSF.
Dr. Richardson has been a member of Howard's faculty since 1989 where he received a NSF Career Advancement Award in 1992 and was a 1997-1999 Distinguished Sigma Xi National Lecturer. His research has been supported by the NSF, NASA, ARO, and DOE and he also works at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, as a U.S. Navy-American Society for Engineering Education Visiting Scientist and Distinguished Summer Faculty Fellow.