Alexei Likhtman at the ASE Annual Conference 2013

Frontier Science: Molecular modelling: from nanoscales to macroscales

Saturday 5 January 2013

ASE Annual Conference 2013

Time: 1530-1630

Alexei Likhtman received his MSc and PhD degrees from the Physics Department of Moscow State University, Russia, in1994 and 1996, respectively. His PhD thesis ‘Theory of microphase separation and light scattering in block copolymer and homopolymer mixtures’ was written under the supervision of Alexander Semenov.

After working for 2 years in Moscow, he moved to the University of Leeds (UK) in 1998 and worked there for 10 years on different aspects of entangled polymers theory. In 1999–2003, he developed linear and nonlinear tube models for monodisperse linear chains, which are considered to be state of the art in this area. However, he later realized that further development of the tube theory is hindered by numerous ambiguities and uncertainties of the tube model and its internal contradictions.

From 2004, he was working on alternative models and published his key paper on slip-spring model in 2005. Later he became interested in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations as a theoretical tool to develop deeper understanding of entanglements or tubes. In 2007, he moved to the University of Reading (UK) as a professor of Mathematical Physics, where together with Mark Matsen he created the group of Theoretical Polymer Physics. In 2007–11, he demonstrated principal agreement between the slip-spring and MD models and currently works on the microscopic definition of entanglements in equilibrium and in flow, as well as on molecular dynamics of shear flows. His other interests include stochastic differential equations, first-passage problems, systematic coarse-graining, and multiscale modeling.