CREST Center for Mesoscopic Modeling and Simulation

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The NSF CREST Center for Mesoscopic Modeling and Simulation"(CMMS) will be established at the City College of the City University of New York (CUNY), in partnership with Hunter College of CUNY. The center will be reinforced by the active participation of CUNY diversity partners, Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate and Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, and by key external scientific and educational outreach collaborations. The scientific focus of the proposed center will be devoted to physicochemical modeling, simulation and analysis at the mesoscale level of several distinct, but physically related, condensed matter and materials systems. The mission of CMMS will be to significantly advance scientific knowledge of complex mesoscopic condensed matter and materials systems and the capability for their simulation and to increase the numbers of persons from underrepresented groups entering research careers in areas related to CMMS's scientific focus.CMMS will bring together researchers from chemistry, physics engineering and computer science departments into five highly interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs), with each IRG responsible for one of the Center's five research subprojects/thrusts. All five IRGs will focus on mesoscale modeling and simulation of complex condensed matter without a crystal lattice structure. IRG I is concerned with polymeric materials interfaces. IRG II investigates soil as an unconsolidated granular material. IRG III concerns biomolecular electron transfer processes. IRG IV concerns large biomolecules in membranes. IRG V deals with superfluids. All of the IRG topics share the unifying and computationally challenging characteristics of multiscale phenomena, highly nonlinear behavior, nonequilibrium with the surroundings and complexity.The educational activities of CMMS for graduate students will include: specialized courses in mesoscopic modeling, interdisciplinary courses in computational science, seminars, internships and training in administration of the Beowulf cluster that will be the Center's primary student training machine.CMMS will also implement a multi-faceted diversity recruitment, retention and outreach plan.