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iTHES member in JST Science News

Tomoya Takiwaki (Nagataki lab.), who joined RIKEN from this August and became an iTHES associate recently, was featured in JST Science News: http://sc-smn.jst.go.jp/M140001/detail/M140001007.html, where he explains his full 3D supernova simulation using the K computer.

Upcoming Events

  • iTHES Workshop
    Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts 2014
    Aug.25(Mon)-27(Wed), 2014 ---- Starts TODAY!
    Ookouchi Hall

  • iTHES Seminar
    Date: 13:30-, August 28, 2014
    Place: S406, Bioscience Building 4F, RIKEN
    Speaker: Hannes Stuke (Institute of Mathematics, Free University of Berlin)
    Title: Extinction by fast diffusion

    Abstract: In my talk I will give an introduction into the problem of fast diffusion. This problem arises in various applications and is still a subject of active mathematical research. In my talk, I will talk about the phenomenon of extinction, that is to say, the solution can vanish uniformly after finite time. I will provide some results on how extinction may occur in this type of equation and how it asymptotically look like.

  • RIKEN Symposium - iTHES workshop on Thermal Field Theory and its applications
    Date: Sep.3(Wed)-5(Fri.), 2014
    Place: Ookochi hall
    http://www.riise.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/TQFT/

  • Osaka-iTHES joint workshop on "Turbulence and Chaos in AdS/CFT"
    Sep. 8 (Mon), 2014
    Room H701, 7th floor, Phys. Dep. Osaka Univ.
    Talks:
    Turbulence in AdS (Akihiro Ishibashi (Kinki U.)),
    Turbulence on the brane in holographic QCD (Shunichiro Kinoshita (Osaka City U.)),
    Nonequilibrium quantum dynamics as a quantum walk in energy space (Takashi Oka (Tokyo U.)),
    Review on Integrable Classical String Solutions in AdS/CFT (Hen-Yu Chen (National Taiwan U.)),
    Chaos and Non-Integrability in AdS/CFT (Kentaroh Yoshida (Kyoto U.)),
    Chaos in Lifshitz spacetimes (Bum-Hoon Lee (Sogang U / CQuest)),
    Concluding words (K.Hashimoto (Osaka U./RIKEN))
    Access to the venue:
    http://www-het.phys.sci.osaka-u.ac.jp/access-e.html

  • iTHES colloquium
    Date: 14:00 ~, September 16 (Tue)
    Lecturer: Prof. Yuko Okamoto (Nagoya Univ. )
    Title: Enhanced sampling techniques for spin and biomolecular simulations
    Three short talks by N. Yamanaka (ithes-phys), T. Shirakawa(ithes-cond) and K. Maeda (ithes-bio) will be presented as well.

  • iTHES Special Lecture on Financial Engineering (in Japanese)
    Date: September 30 (Tue)
    Place: the large meeting room on the 2nd floor of the Main Cafeteria.
    Lecturers: J. Hashiba and Y. Takano (MIZUHO-DL Financial Technology)

  • iTHES-IPMU-Osaka Joint Symposium
    Nov. 6 (Thu.) 2014
    at Kavli IPMU, Univ. Tokyo (http://www.ipmu.jp/ )
    Invited speakers:
    H. Ooguri (IPMU/Caltech)
    H. Murayama (IPMU/Berkeley)
    E. Komatsu (Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik)
    F. Nori (iTHES/CEMS)
    Y. Sugita (iTHES/AICS)
    K. Fujimoto (Osaka)

  • Person of the Week

    James S. M. Anderson
    Paraphrasing Alfréd Rényi to Paul Erdős “a theoretician is a machine that turns caffeine into papers.”

    Nice to meet you. I’m James, a theoretical chemist working in the Computational Condensed Matter Physics Laboratory at RIKEN hosted by Dr. Seiji Yunoki as a Foreign Postdoctoral Researcher (FPR). I appreciate the opportunity to let you get to know me a little. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I did my undergraduate at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada where I obtained a degree in Mathematics as well as a degree in Biomolecular Chemistry. During this time I developed a fondness for mathematics and endeavoured to use it to solve real problems in the realm of chemistry. This led me to joining Prof. Paul W. Ayers’ theoretical chemistry group at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada for graduate school. As a graduate student I worked on a variety of subjects within the field of nonrelativistic quantum chemistry. Using mathematics as my main tool I concentrated on developing methods for finding ways to obtain near exact solutions to the electronic Schrödinger equation at low computational cost as well as formulating methods to provide chemical intuition from the framework of quantum mechanics. Succinctly, my primary research interests are:

    1. Developing methods that accurately approximate the electronic structure of molecules, especially methods that are based directly on the underlying electronic Schrödinger equation. (I am also working the Schrödinger equation for nucleons and the Dirac-Coulomb equation for relativistic electrons). At a mathematical level, I am interested in developing computational tools that are required to achieve this goal, like methods for very accurate numerical integration in spaces of very high dimension.
    2. Developing computational facile models that provide intuition, with a strong preference for models that are derived directly from formal mathematics. My goal is to develop the mathematical foundations for chemical concepts that are taken for granted (e.g., the chemical bond, and the concept of atoms in molecules) and to answer chemical questions such as what makes an atom reactive, whether removing an electron from a molecule can lead to interesting local increases in electron density, etc..
    3. Using mathematical theorems and analytic solutions to model equations to gain insight into chemistry. For example, I have worked to find analytic solutions to exactly solvable equations related to electronic structure, prove properties of analytic solutions, demonstrate limitations of approximate solution methods, prove whether seemingly different alternative approaches are in fact equivalent, etc..
    Following the completion of my Ph.D. I did a two year Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellowship in a nuclear structure physics theory group at The University of Tokyo hosted by Prof. Takaharu Otsuka. I joined in order to learn theoretical methods employed in the nuclear physics community and then cross-fertilize methods between the fields of quantum chemistry and nuclear physics as used to be the tradition.

    After finishing my JSPS fellowship I then moved to the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University in Beijing, China as a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Postdoctoral fellow hosted by Prof. Wenjian Liu. I joined this group to learn more about relativistic effects and how they apply to chemistry. I am always interested in approaching the exact result so learning how to include effects left out of nonrelativistic quantum chemistry seemed to be the logical next step.

    I am looking forward to being an active member in iTHES, and I am looking forward to meeting you and other members of iTHES and know we will find mutual interests for us to discuss and collaborate on.

    Visitors

    Prof. John S. Tse (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
    Computer modelling of phase transformations in solids and using first principles quantum and classical molecular dynamics methods.
    http://physics.usask.ca/~tsej/
    Aug. 23 – Sep. 3, 2014
    Computational Astrophysics Laboratory
    (4th floor, Information Science Building)