Update: Eight-three people have registered for the meeting, which included four invited talks and 37 contributed table talks.

Please join us on Saturday, October 12, 2013 at Brandeis University to meet 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.

There will be coffee, tea, and bagels available from 9:00 am to 9:30 am. The first session begins at 9:30 am. The meeting will conclude at approximately 2:40 pm. The schedule will be posted on Wednesday.

Table talks. The format for the contributed talks is different than in the past. Instead of a three minute talk with limited time for questions, contributors will give a short announcement (≤ 30 seconds) of their work. We will then move from the lecture hall to the adjacent room during which each contributor will sit at a separate table with their laptop or tablet and discuss their work with meeting participants. Such a format will remove most of the work and expense associated with posters and provide greater feedback to contributors. This new format will take advantage of the fact that contributors have access to a laptop or tablet and that the time preparing for a table talk is about the same as preparing for a short talk.

Session I: Part 1

1. Edyta Malolepsza, Boston University, Generalized ensemble sampling method (gREM) applied to methane clathrate formation.
2. Shanadeen Begay, Boston University, Thermodynamics and structural function of methionine enkephalin using statistical temperature molecular dynamics and CHARMM.
3. Solen Ekesan, Brandeis University, Transferable pseudo-classical electrons for Aufbau of atomic ions.
4. Uttam Bhat, Boston University, Acquaintance dynamics with clustering and finite connectivity.
5. Fei Chen, Boston University, Viscosity of high molecular weight polymer films under nano-confinement.
6. Rahul Kulkarni (given by Niraj Kumar), UMass Boston, Exact solutions for models of gene expression with bursting and feedback.
7. Josè Alvarado, MIT, Molecular motors robustly drive active gels to a critically connected state.
8. Kristina Streu, Boston College, Stability of stapled p53 peptides bound to MDM2.

Session I: Part 2

1. Niraj Kumar, UMass, Boston, Determination of burst parameters in gene expression model.
2. Gabriel Redner, Brandeis University, Simulation study of extensile active nematic liquid crystals.
3. Lou Colonna-Romano, Clark University, Finite size scaling in the fully connected Ising model.
4. Jason Perlmutter, Brandeis University, Viral genome structures are optimal for capsid assembly.
5. Elias Putzig, Brandeis University, Phase separation and emergent structures in an active nematic.
6. Matthew Perkett, Brandeis University, Using Markov state models to study virus capsid assembly.
7. Rebecca Perry, Harvard University, Colloidal experiments to determine the role of mass in the classical partition function.
8. Alexander Isakov, Harvard University, Synchronization regimes in a stochastic multiscale Kuramoto model.

Session III: Part 1

1. Altan Allawala, Brown University, The steady-state statistics of the Lorenz attractor using a Fokker-Planck approach.
2. Wanming Qi, Brown University, Statistical equilibria of two-dimensional Euler turbulence on the torus and the sphere.
3. Nicholas Lubbers, Boston University, An asset exchange model with tunable Pareto index.
4. Jon Makkinje, Boston University, Asset exchange model with taxation.
5. Kang Liu, Boston University, Asset exchange model with growth.
6. James Silva, Boston University, Heterogeneous nucleation in the long-range Ising model.
7. Sandeep Choubey, Brandeis University, Deciphering transcriptional dynamics in vivo by counting nascent RNA molecules.
8. Maksim Imakaev, MIT, Polymer models of metaphase chromosome organization.
9. Pramesh Singh, RPI, External influence and structural balance in social networks.
10. Javad Noorbakhsh, Boston University, Stochastic excitable systems coupled to an external medium as a model for social amoebae.

Session III: Part 2

1. Sergey Venev, UMass Medical School, Segment self-repulsion is the major driving force of influenza genome packaging.
2. Adam Willard, MIT, Inferring the nature of a hydrated substrate from the molecular structure of the adjacent water interface.
3. Sumantra Sarkar, Brandeis University, Origin of rigidity in dry granular solids.
4. Lishibanya Mohapatra, Brandeis University, How do cells construct filaments of a specific length?
5. Tom Stone, Husson University, Consensus problems in Euclidean networks with cost.
6. Timothy Minghai Li, Clark University, Graph representation of protein free energy landscape based on transition path theory calculation.
7. John Kolinski, Harvard University, Rapid dynamics at the onset of liquid droplet impact.
8. Matthew Ludden, University of Maine, Consensus and transitions in a coupled lattice Sznajd model.
9. Danny Goldstein, Brandeis University, Coupled Brusselators.
10. Stephen DeCamp, Brandeis University, Characterizing active 2D nematic liquid crystals.
11. Kaushik Balasubramanian, Brandeis University, Spheroidal swimmers in shear.

Registration form

There is no registration fee if you register by the deadline of Tuesday, October 8. If you miss the deadline, you may still attend the meeting, but the cost will be $10, and we cannot guarantee that food will be available.

The cost of the meeting is subsidized by the Topical Group on Statistical & Nonlinear Physics and by the following institutions:

• Department of Physics, Boston University
• Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Brandeis University
• Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University
• Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University
• Department of Physics, UMass, Amherst

The cost of previous meetings was subsidized by the New England Section of the American Physical Society. We thank the New England Section for their prior support and encourage you to join (at no additional charge) the New England Section if you are not already a member.

Announcements and Links

• Meeting of the New England Section of the APS, October 11-12, 2013.
• NEWMech2013, October 12, 2013.
• New England Complex Fluids Workgroup.
• Bacon+.
• Statistical Mechanics Conference, Rutgers University.
• CCP2014, XXVI IUPAP Conference on Computational Physics, August 11-14, 2014 at Boston University.

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. October 14, 2000.
3. October 20, 2001.
4. October 19, 2002.
5. October 18, 2003.
6. October 16, 2004.
7. October 22, 2005.
8. October 21, 2006.
9. October 13, 2007.
10. October 18, 2008.
11. October 10, 2009.
12. October 9, 2010.
13. October 15, 2011.
14. October 6, 2012.

Organizing committee

• Bulbul Chakraborty, Brandeis University
• Claudio Chamon, Boston University
• Harvey Gould, Clark University
• Michael Hagan, Brandeis University
• Greg Huber, University of Connecticut Health Center
• William Klein, Boston University
• Jon Machta, UMass, Amherst
• Sid Redner, Boston University
• David Weitz, Harvard University