The Pitzer Lecture in Theoretical Chemistry features Dr. Michele Parrinello, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, for a lecture on Atomistic Computer Simulations: Past, Present, and Future. Reception to follow at 2136 Newman and Wolfrom Lab, 100 W. 18th Ave.
Parrinello is an Italian physicist particularly known for his work in molecular dynamics (the computer simulation of physical movements of atoms and molecules). Parrinello and Roberto Car were awarded the Dirac Medal and the Sidney Fernbach Award in 2009 for their continuing development of the Car-Parrinello method, first proposed in their seminal 1985 paper "Unified Approach for Molecular Dynamics and Density-Functional Theory".
Parinello received his Laurea in physics from the University of Bologna in 1968. After working at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, the IBM research lab in Zurich, and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, he was appointed professor of computational science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 2001, a position he also holds at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. In 2004 Parinello was elected to Great Britain's Royal Society. In 2011 he was awarded the Marcel Benoist Prize. He currently has an h-index of 108, which is one of the highest among all scientists.
Sponsored by the Department of Chemistry/Biochemistry and the Ohio Supercomputer Center.
