This week is a special joint colloquium hosted by the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Simulational Physics. Dr. David Landau will be hosting Dr. Dennis Rapaport. The talk is entitled "Simulating self-assembly with molecular dynamics."

The talk describes some of the more fascinating aspects of self-assembly that emerge when a molecular dynamics approach is used. One of the phenomena to be addressed is the role of reversibility in assembly, with emphasis on reduced polyhedral-based models of virus capsids and the examination of the growth histories of individual shells. The other is the occurrence of particle migration in a simplified model for studying micelle growth, where transfer of both solute and surfactant molecules between fully developed clusters can be observed.