Tenth Annual Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics Meeting
Saturday, October 18, 2008

Update: Thank you to the 75 people who attended and to everyone who gave an invited or a contributed talk and who chaored a session. We look forward to the eleventh annual meeting in October 2009.

Please join us on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at Brandeis University to meet and talk with your colleagues in the New England area working in statistical mechanics. The goal of these meetings is to offer an informal, friendly, and supportive environment where people from a variety of departments and institutions can exchange ideas and where old and new friends can meet.

Contributed talks   Directions   Announcements   pdf file for posting   Organizing committee   Advisory committee

There will be coffee, tea, and bagels from 9:00 am to 9:30 am and four sessions beginning at 9:30 am. Each session features a 25 minute invited talk. The first three sessions also include several three minute contributed talks. One Windows and and one Mac OS X notebook computer will be available on which you can load your talk from a USB flash drive or CD in advance of the session. Powerpoint and Acrobat Reader will be available on both computers and Keynote will be available on the Macintosh. Lunch will last for 60 minutes to give attendees a chance to mingle. Coffee and tea will be available at all times. The meeting will conclude at approximately 3:30 pm to give attendees time to catch the train back to Cambridge.

Schedule

9:00 - 9:30 amBagels, coffee, and tea    
9:30 - 10:35 am Session I Peter Weichman, BAE Systems Chair
9:30 - 9:35 amRobert Meyer Brandeis University"The new Brandeis MRSEC"
9:35 - 10:05 am Michael Hagan Brandeis University "How viral capsids adapt to mismatched cargoes: Identifying mechanisms of morphology control with simulations."
10:05 - 10:40 am Contributed talks    
10:40 - 11:05 am Coffee and informal discussions    
11:05 am - 12:10 pm Session II David Weitz, Harvard University  
11:05 - 11:35 am Eleni Katifori Harvard University "Collapse and statistical mechanics of pressurized rings in two dimensions."
11:35 - 12:10 am Contributed talks    
12:10 - 1:10 pm Lunch and Informal Conversations    
1:10 - 2:10 pm Session III Ophelia Tsui, Boston University Chair
1:10 - 1:40 pm Contributed talks    
1:40 - 2:10 pm Boris Svistunov UMass Amherst "Diagrammatic Monte Carlo."
2:10 - 2:25 pm Coffee and informal discussions    
2:25 - 3:25 pm Session IV Narayanan Menon, UMass Amherst Chair
2:25 - 2:55 pm Contributed talks    
2:55 - 3:25 pm Pedro Reis MIT "Anticracks: Localization of deformation in solid foams under compression."

Contributed talks

Session I

  1. Udayan Mohanty, Boston College, "Rare events and large thermal fluctuations in the ribosome."
  2. Jingshan Zhang, Harvard University, "Constraints imposed by nonfunctional protein-protein interactions on gene expression and proteome size."
  3. Amandeep Sangha, Boston University, "Chaperonin assisted protein folding."
  4. Sara Imari Walker, Dartmouth College, "Chiral symmetry breaking and the origin of proto-cells."
  5. Aleksandr Kivenson, Brandeis University, "Mechanisms of viral capsid assembly around a polymer."
  6. Mauro Mobilia, The University of Warwick, "Self-organization and evolutionary dynamics in mobile communities with cyclic dominance."
  7. Sidney Redner, Boston University, "How Many Species Have Mass M?"
  8. Ranjan Mukhopadhyay, Clark University, "Self-organized periodicity of protein clusters in growing bacteria."
  9. Julian Candia, Northeastern University, "Color triads in complex networks: Uncovering racial segregation patterns in U.S. high schools."

Session II

  1. Mitch Mailman, Brandeis University, "Soft modes in 2D frictionless packings of ellipses."
  2. Yoshihisa Fujii, Boston University, "Mechanical properties of polystyrene brush layer."
  3. Natalie Arkus, Harvard University, "Self-assembly at low N."
  4. Dave Sicilia, Dartmouth College, "Oscillon fields forever."
  5. Ken Kamrin, Harvard University, "Nonlinear elasto-plasticity for dense granular flow."
  6. Guangnan Meng, Harvard University, "Packing six colloidal spheres."
  7. Jerome Fung, Harvard University, "Self-assembly of colloidal spheres on droplets at low N."
  8. Homin Shin, UMass Amherst, "Mesophases of soft-sphere aggregates in strong segregation limit."
  9. Ranjit Chacko, Clark University, "Probability distributions, free energies, and spinodals."

Session III

  1. James Bagrow, Northeastern University, "Phase transition in the rich-get-richer mechanism due to finite-size effects."
  2. Christopher Serino, Boston University, "Statistical mechanics of damage."
  3. Deok-Sun Lee, Northeastern University, "Interactions and correlations in communication patterns."
  4. Chris Rycroft, "A multiscale simulation of dense granular flow."
  5. Lode Pollet, UMass Amherst, "Numerical simulations of Bosonic systems in condensed matter physics."
  6. Dapeng Bi, Brandeis University, "Soft glassy rheology: A model for dense driven granular assemblies."
  7. Felix Werner, UMass Amherst, "Virial theorems for trapped cold atoms."

Session IV

  1. Kipton Barros, Boston University, "Generalizing Alexander-McTague: A new form of crystalline nucleation."
  2. Rachele Dominguez, Boston University, "Beyond Cahn-Hilliard-Cook: The early time kinetics of symmetry breaking phase transitions."
  3. Amila Hadziomerspahic, Wellesley College, "Rheology of precipitated silica in polydimethylsiloxane."
  4. Zhaohui Yang, Boston University, "Non-liquid-like behavior in molten polymer films."
  5. Maksim Kitsak, Boston University, "K-shell structure of complex networks."
  6. Jessica Leach, Boston University, "Surface absorption of polymers."
  7. Ya Liu, Brandeis University, "Segregation of polymers in 2D confinement."
  8. Tom Stone, University of Maine, "Probing the memory of a spin glass."
  9. Juyong Park, Northeastern University, "Diagrammatic perturbation methods in complex networks."
  10. Sune Lehmann, Northeastern University, "Communities in bipartite networks."

The cost of the meeting is subsidized by the New England Section of the American Physical Society, and hence there is no registration fee if you register by the deadline. Please join the New England Section if you are not already a member. It is necessary to register in advance so that sufficient food and refreshments will be available. The deadline for registration was Tuesday, October 14. If you know that you are coming and haven't registered, please send a message to Harvey Gould.

Directions to Brandeis

The location of the meeting at Brandeis University is the same as last year. The meeting will be held on the first floor of Lemberg Lee Hall, Room 180, in the Lemberg Academic Center. As you enter Brandeis through the main entrance on South Street, drive toward the police booth and then take a left. At the next intersection take a left just after the Admissions building. You will quickly be in the T parking lot, behind the theater. Turn right and drive to the very far end of the lot and park. Walk up the roadway ahead of you and enter the Lemberg Academic Center on your right. Campus map, click on the PDF version. No parking permits are needed. Signs will be posted on the day of the meeting.

The Brandeis/Roberts commuter rail stop is very convenient. Trains depart to North Station at 3:44 pm, 6:11 pm, 6:34 pm, and 10:14 pm. Buses are also available.

Announcements

Previous meetings

  1. The first meeting took place on Saturday, October 16, 1999 at Brandeis. We honored the memory of Eugene Gross, a founding member of the physics faculty at Brandeis University and well known researcher in statistical mechanics.
  2. Saturday, October 14, 2000.
  3. Saturday, October 20, 2001.
  4. Saturday, October 19, 2002.
  5. Saturday, October 18, 2003.
  6. Saturday, October 16, 2004.
  7. Saturday, October 22, 2005.
  8. Saturday, October 21, 2006.
  9. Saturday, October 13, 2007.

Organizing committee

Advisory committee

Please send questions, comments, and corrections to Harvey Gould.

Updated 20 October 2008.