Theoretical physics, theory in soft matter, computer simulations
Contact
Objectives
The challenge of this project is to understand the role of molecular properties of self-organized phosphor-lipid bilayers on the interaction behaviour with nano-objects such as spherical nanoparticles, stiff rods and protein-like copolymers:
- Implementing an appropriately coarse-grained model for bilayer membranes based on highly parallelized LAMPS-code.
- Dynamics of lipids and extension to multi-component membranes consisting of lipids and cholesterol-like molecules.
- Analysing the effects of charge and stiffness of lipids on the effective interaction potentials with nano-objects.
- Understanding the influence of nano-objects on permeation, rupture and pore-formation.
Tasks and methodology
- Implementing suitable coarse-grained models on LAMMPS using highly parallelized code and GPU-implementations. Simulating interactions with individual and many nano-objects.
- Implementing electrostatic interactions and physiological environments (ionic strength) using most efficient algorithms and comparing various approaches. Implementing and developing methods to calculated effective interaction models between membranes and nano-objects.
Starting date
September 2014
