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Assessment of the Group Directed by
Professor Y. Kawazoe
on Materials Design by Computer Simulation.
SHORT BIOGRAPHY
During the period September 21-27, 2002 I was an invited visitor with the above group and here summarize briefly my assessment.
In addition to Professor Kawazoe the group has 2 Visiting Professors, 2 Associate Professors, 4 Research Associates, 8 Postdoctoral Researchers and 11 Graduate Students, supported by Technical and Clerical Staff. By international standards, this is a very substantial group dealing with theoretical and computational material science. Members include, in addition to Japanese scientists, also numerous longer and shorter term visitors from various other countries and continents. Computing hard- and software, including in-house developed codes, appear to be excellent.
I was very well impressed by a high quality short collaborative meeting, during my visit, with a group of industrial materials scientists and with academics from other Japanese Universities. This meeting dealt mostly with conduction through various kinds of "molecular wires," with diameters in the nanometer range.
There is, in my opinion, a good balance between research aimed at fundamental understanding, development of computational and simulational methodologies, and applications to new devices.
I met at great length with the entire group, with various subgroups and with individual researchers. I found the quality of the work very competitive with analogous leading groups worldwide. Leadership and morale appeared to be excellent.
I personally was especially intrigued by 2 projects: The very original study of nano-clusters consisting of a central atom of element A, surrounded by atoms of a different element B. These systems raise interesting questions concerning the nature of their bonding, and hold promise of the possibility of designing new materials with predetermined properties. (This project was largely led by Visiting Professor V. Kumar).
Secondly I was very well impressed by the broad-based work on conduction through nanoscale wires of different types, which appears to be making excellent progress. These wires are expected to play an essential role in the next generation of nano-devices.
At the end of my visit we agreed that Professor Kawazoe's group and myself would continue our scientific interaction in the future.
Walter Kohn
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Professor Walter Kohn
Department of Physics
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
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20 September 02
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