UCSD’s RIMSE research program (Research Immersion in Materials Science and Engineering), sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, as part of the UC San Diego Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), are immersive, hands-on courses meant to prepare trainees to work in Materials Science and Materials Engineering research laboratories.

While working alongside Prof. Tod Pascal to train on the computational aspects of the self-assembly, I hope to deploy high-performance computing and build predictive models that capture the chemical and physical complexities of mesoscale materials as well as the dynamics of their formation. With theoretical framework to solve these problems, I hope to learn how to combine first-principles electronic structure calculations, atomistic and coarse-grained (CG) models. The structure and dynamics of these system will be explored by means of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, while Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations will be used to determine the long-term, thermodynamic behavior.