aspuru-list February 2014

aspuru-list@lists.fas.harvard.edu

32 participants
74 discussions

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Matthew Goldey Visit Postponed

by David G. Tempel

Dear group, Due to a change of plans, Matthew Goldey will visit on March 7th instead of this Wednesday as originally planned. I will send out the details as the time approaches. David

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Fwd: iPhone owners, please don't ignore update

by Martin Blood-Forsythe

Dear iPhone and Mac user colleagues, The sys-admin for the physics department just sent out the advice below that I think is worth passing on. Apparently iOS 7.0.6 patches a critical SSL certificate issue (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6147) Best wishes, -Martin ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Maggie McFee <mmcfee(a)physics.harvard.edu> Date: Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 12:33 PM Subject: iPhone owners, please don't ignore update To: help(a)physics.harvard.edu WHO: iPhone users (also affects iPod Touch) If you are an iPhone 4 or 5 user, I sincerely urge you to install the recent 7.0.6 update. iPhone 3 users running iOS 6 will also see a pending update. (If you have an iPhone 4 and did not upgrade to iOS 7, now is the time. There is no iOS 6 patch for iPhone 4.) This patch closes a serious security hole and is worrisome enough that I felt this email necessary. If you haven't seen the notice for an update yet on your device, go to Settings -> General -> Software Updates FYI - Mac owners. A similar Mac OSX patch for computers will follow soon. Not applying it will leave your Mac vulnerable. Please install it as soon as you are offered the update by your Mac (or run Software Update manually). Maggie McFee Physics Computing Services

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] ITAMP topical lunch discussion: Friday, February 21 @ 12:00

by tony.lee＠cfa.harvard.edu

ITAMP Topical Lunch Discussion Date: Friday, February 21 Time: 12:00-1:30 pm Pizza will be served. Location: B-106 @ Center for Astrophysics (60 Garden Street) Directions: after entering the lobby of the CfA, turn right to enter the hallway of the B building. In the hallway, turn right again, and B-106 is there. Speaker: Klaus Bartschat (Drake) Title: Benchmark Calculations of Atomic Collision Processes Abstract: The rapid development of computational resources has resulted in enormous improvements in the accuracy of numerical calculations of atomic collision processes. In this talk I will concentrate on recent advances in the computational treatment of charged-particle and intense short-pulse laser interactions with atoms, ions, and small molecules. Examples include electron collisions with heavy complex targets that are of significant importance in many modeling applications in plasma and astrophysics, fundamental studies of highly correlated 4-body Coulomb processes such as simultaneous ionization with excitation, and the accurate solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in the presence of intense, few-cycle femto/attosecond laser fields, which paves the way for quantum dynamic imaging and coherent control.

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Quantum Chemistry in the media

by Dmitrij Rappoport

Dear all, This is a today's headline from Salon.com: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference The article about the International Congress of Quantum Chemistry, which is to take place this summer in Beijing, China, features some of our favorite heroes, and puts our beloved research field into an interesting light. http://www.salon.com/2014/02/20/sexism_plagues_major_chemistry_conference_b… Enjoy (or maybe not). Dmitrij Dr. Dmitrij Rappoport Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA phone: (617) 495 9676, mobile: (857) 600 6846 email: rappoport(a)chemistry.harvard.edu

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] [qip] Friday

by Edward Farhi

Hi Quanta We will meet on Friday February 21 at 11:00 in 6-310. Cyril Stark will give a presentation on his work. See you there. Eddie ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Edward Farhi Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics Director Center for Theoretical Physics Massachusetts Institute of Technology 6-300 Cambridge MA 02139 617 253 4871 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: _______________________________________________ qip mailing list qip(a)mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/qip

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Aspuru group meeting today at 2:30 pm in Division Room

by Felipe Herrera

Hi everyone, Today is Stephanie's turn to tell us something interesting about antenna complexes at the group meeting. See the title and abstract below. Cheers, Felipe */Electromagnetic study of the chlorosome antenna complex of Chlorobium-tepidum/* Abstract: Green sulfur bacteria is an iconic example of nature's adaptation: thriving in environments of extremely low photon density, the bacterium ranks itself amongst the most efficient natural light-harvesting organisms. The photosynthetic antenna complex of this bacterium is a self-assembled nanostructure, ~60x150nm, made of bacteriochlorophyll molecules. We study the system from a computational nanoscience perspective by using electrodynamic modeling with the goal of understanding its role as a nanoantenna. Three different nanostructures, built from two molecular packing moieties, are considered: a structure built of concentric cylinders of aggregated bacteriochlorophyll-d monomers, a single cylinder of bacteriochlorophyll-c monomers and a model for the entire chlorosome. The theoretical model is employed to extract optical spectra, concentration and depolarization of electromagnetic fields within the chlorosome, and fluxes of energy transfer for the structures. The second model nanostructure shows the largest field enhancement. Further, field enhancement is found to be more sensitive to dynamic noise rather than structural disorder. Field depolarization however is similar for all structures. This indicates that the directionality of transfer is robust to structural variations while on the other hand, the intensity of transfer can be tuned by structural variations.

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Fwd: Wed 2/26 at noon: Career talk and Q&A on startups, industrial labs, machine intelligence, and stochastic computation

by Martin Blood-Forsythe

Dear colleagues, If you have any interest in probabilistic programming (MCMC and other techniques), I highly recommend attending this Physics Department career event on 2/26. Ben is a super nice guy and he has developed some technology that is truly incredible. Best wishes, -Martin ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jacob Barandes <barandes(a)physics.harvard.edu> Date: Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 10:30 PM Subject: Re: Wed 2/26 at noon: Career talk and Q&A on startups, industrial labs, machine intelligence, and stochastic computation *Physics Department Career Event: Talk and Open Round-Table Q&A Session* *Title:* Startups, Industrial Labs, and Transforming Machine Intelligence through the Physics of Stochastic Computation *Speaker:* Ben Vigoda, director of Analog Devices Corporate Labs and entrepreneur *Location and Time:* Jefferson 250, Wednesday, Feb. 26, Noon-1:30pm *A complementary pizza lunch will be served.* All undergrads, grad students, post-docs, and others from physics, engineering, astronomy (and beyond) are welcome. *Please RSVP at:* https://harvard.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_cvbrBxhmBk2xQDb The Harvard Physics Department welcomes back Ben Vigoda, director of Analog Devices Corporate Labs and entrepreneur, for another career talk and open round-table question-and-answer session for those with an interest in startups and/or industrial research. The types of career options that will be discussed include opportunities at the cutting edge of statistical machine learning techniques and applications, probabilistic programming languages, data analytics and modeling, novel compiler and processor architectures, and cloud-based high-performance computing platforms. *What We Do:* At our industrial labs we create startups. Most of these startups are internal new businesses for Analog Devices, Inc. and at least one currently is an external startup. Much of our research and development revolves around developing a new approach to computing based on Bayesian inference, and includes innovation in statistical machine learning, probabilistic programming languages, compilers, applications, novel integrated circuit approaches, and cloud computing platforms. Our first probability processor hardware demonstrates orders of magnitude wins on machine learning and statistical inference benchmarks. We are developing open-source probability programming languages that help enable rapid prototyping and development of statistical machine learning applications. We will demonstrate some applications that we are building on top of the probability processing stack. *Bio:* Ben Vigoda is the director of Analog Devices Lyric Labs, a corporate research labs located in Kendall Square, Cambridge that grew from the acquisition by Analog Devices of Lyric Semiconductor, Inc. As CEO, Vigoda raised over $25M in venture capital funding and government research contracts while also contributing to the company's technology development. Lyric was selected as one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies by Technology Review in 2010. The company's work on probability processors has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Wired Magazine, Scientific American, and EE Times. Vigoda developed the technical foundations for Lyric during his PhD work with Prof. Neil Gershenfeld at the Center for Bits and Atoms in the MIT Media Lab, and subsequently while a Research Scientist at Mitsubishi Research Labs. While a PhD student, he learned about how to create a startup as part of the process of winning the MIT 50k Entrepreneurship Competition and Harvard New Venture Competition. He earned his undergraduate degree in physics from Swarthmore College and has worked at the Santa Fe Institute on alternative models of computation and at Hewlett Packard Labs, where he helped transfer academic research projects to product divisions, including a toner level sensor that made its way into every HP Laserjet printer. He has also worked on some other interesting projects, including automated design of DNA-based nano-tile structures, building a virtual juggling system that toured for years with the Flying Karamazov Brothers, and co-founding Design That Matters, a not-for-profit that collaborates with universities and volunteer engineers to design new products and services for the poor in developing countries. -- *Gamelan Labs, Inc. in Kendall Square* Want to work with MIT and Harvard physics PhDs and get in on the ground floor of a growing science-based startup in Kendall Square? Gamelan Labs http://www.gamelanlabs.com is a new startup company initially funded by several million dollars in DARPA contracts. We are developing a new approach to data analytics based on probabilistic programming languages (PPL) http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/04/probabilistic-programming.html. Under the hood, probabilistic programs are solved by a range of inference algorithms to estimate the posterior distribution over the variables in a model. Understanding these systems requires mathematical sophistication and physical intuition, and a background in physics helps a lot. We also have to get the software to work at large scale. Obviously it's going to help if you think that activities like programming and playing with Amazon EC2 are fun. We hire people who are smart and nice and like to hack.

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Fwd: Theory post-doc opening: Brookhaven Nat. Lab

by Alan Aspuru-Guzik

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Hybertsen, Mark* <mhyberts(a)bnl.gov> Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 Subject: Theory post-doc opening: Brookhaven Nat. Lab To: Alan Aspuru-Guzik <aspuru(a)chemistry.harvard.edu> Cc: "Hybertsen, Mark" <mhyberts(a)bnl.gov> Dear Alan-- I have an opening for a theory post-doc in my group at Brookhaven in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials. Some details are attached, including the on-line application procedure (or look for job id 16595 on the jobs portal at bnl.gov). The individual will work directly with me. I have a number of interesting project directions that will allow a young research to pursue both theory motivated research as well as research with a strong tie to experimental collaborators. I have highlighted complex interfaces as an overall theme, but this runs the gamut from supported nano particles in the catalysis arena that we consider in collaboration with internal colleagues at CFN to liquid-solid interfaces to the chemical bonding in single molecule junctions that I have studied with the Venkataraman group at Columbia. If you have a talented student or post-doc looking for an exciting opportunity, please send them my way! Regards Mark Mark S Hybertsen Group Leader, Theory & Computation Group Center for Functional Nanomaterials Brookhaven National Laboratory Tel: 631-344-5996 E-mail: mhyberts(a)bnl.gov <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mhyberts(a)bnl.gov');> -- Alán Aspuru-Guzik | Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology | Harvard University 12 Oxford Street, Room M113 | Cambridge, MA 02138 (617)-384-8188 | http://aspuru.chem.harvard.edu

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Matthew Goldey visit next Wednesday

by David G. Tempel

Dear Group, Matthew Goldey is a postdoc candidate who will be visiting with us next Wednesday, February 26th. He is currently a graduate student in the Head-Gordon group and works on implementations of MP2 and other wavefunction based electronic structure methods. His talk (title and abstract below) will be at 2 pm in the division room. Additionally, there are spots available at lunch and in the morning to speak with him, so please let me know if you're interested. best, David Range-separation within correlation methods. While dynamic correlation methods like MP2 obtain qualitatively correct behavior for nonbonded interactions, quantitative problems remain due to underlying basis set errors as well as the inaccurate physics encoded in MP2. Reliable treatment of nonbonded interactions typically requires large basis sets and high levels of theory, yet both types of error can be directly reduced through attenuation of the Coulomb operator. The resulting attenuated MP2 methods yield results for nonbonded interactions that are much more accurate than MP2, both in the same basis and complete basis set limit. Recent extensions of this work addressing semi-empirical improvements for bonded interactions will also be presented.

10 years, 2 months

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Free breakfast tomorrow!

by Cynthia M. Chew

Hi Everyone, Due to the first floor's success in winning the Green Campus Initiative's recycling challenge last fall, our group is invited to breakfast tomorrow. Please join! Date: Thursday, 20 February Time: 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. Location: Department Center Cheers, Cynthia Cynthia M. Chew Faculty Assistant | Aspuru-Guzik Research Group Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology | Harvard University 12 Oxford Street | Mallinckrodt 112 | Cambridge, MA 02138 617.496.1716 office | 617.496.9411 fax http://aspuru.chem.harvard.edu/

10 years, 2 months

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aspuru-list February 2014