PolyHub Board of Directors

The PolyHub Board of Directors is comprised of many of the leading experts in theoretical, experimental, and computational research in the broad area of polymer dynamics from around the globe. The primary function of the Board of Directors is to set policy, agendas, and procedures for PolyHub use and adminstration in accordance with the PolyHub Charter. The board meets periodically via video webcasting and at topical conferences to monitor progress and provide direction for future PolyHub initiatives. Members of the Board and their relevant areas of expertise are listed below. (Clicking on the board member's name will take you to that individual's personal webpage.)

Brian Edwards (PolyHub Director) is Professor and Associate Head of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK). His areas of expertise lie in theoretical modeling of polymeric liquids and in atomistic and multiscale simulation of flowing polymers. His research also focuses on the application of the theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics to modeling and and simulation of transport phenomena in other areas of soft condensed matter physics, including liquid crystals, bulk metallic glasses, and diblock and triblock copolymer films.

Chunggi Baig is Assistant Professor in the School of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering UNIST in Ulsan, South Korea. He performs computationally demanding nonequilibrium molecular dynamics and nonequilibrium Monte Carlo atomistic simulations of polymeric liquids, including linear, branched, star-shaped, and H-shaped polymer architectures.

Nikos Karayiannis is Research Associate in the Chemical and Industrial Engineering Department at the Polytechnic University of Madrid in Spain. His research interests include simulation studies of structure and dynamics of synthetic and biological polymer systems through hierarchical modeling approaches.

Bamin Khomami is Armour T. Granger and Alvin & Sally Beaman Distinguished Professor and Head, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, UTK. His ongoing research is focused on the dynamics of complex fluids including polymeric and biological fluids, fiber suspensions, and colloidal systems, aerosol based processing of nano-structured particles and coatings, and tailored (lipid mixtures and targeting moieties) nano-emulsions for drug delivery and personalized medicine. He also has a strongly relevant experimental program in the rheology of complex fluids.

Martin Kröger is Professor of Computational Polymer Physics, Department of Materials Science, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. His research interests cover the relevant topics of coarse-grained modeling and topological characterization of polymeric liquids, atomistic and coarse-grained simulations of flowing macromolecular systems, dynamics magneto-rheological fluids, and applications of dendronized polymers.

Vlasis Mavrantzas is Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Patras in Greece and the Institute of Chemical Engineering & High Temperature Chemical Processes. His relevant areas of expertise include atomistic equilibrium and nonequilibrium Monte Carlo simulation of flowing polymeric liquids, molecular dynamics simulation of coarse-grained macromolecular models, statistical mechanics of linear, H-shaped, and star-shaped poymers, and the application of the theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics to dynamic polymeric systems.

Hans Christian Öttinger is Professor and head of the Institute of Polymer Physics in the Department of Materials Science at ETH. His research group is engaged in many aspects of theroretical and experimental polymer dynamics research, such as rheology and thermodynamics of polymer solutions and melts, multiscale dynamics simulations of polymeric liquids undergoing flow, nonequiibrium thermodynamics of complex fluids and glasses, and statistical physics of macromolecular materials composed of atomistic or coarse-grained constituent particles. Emphasis is placed on model development from first principles when possible, in particular, through utilization of the inherent mathematical structure of nonequilibrium processes (GENERIC).

Gerald Ragghianti is Chief Technology Officer and Administrator of PolyHub. He is a senior computer services technician at UTK, with a M.S. degree in Physics. He has extensive experience building, maintaining, and administering large-scale clusters, and in software and middleware administration and configuration. He has also been extensively involved in the development of the infrastructure to support the Compact Muon Solenoid project within the Open Science Grid at UTK.

Jay Schieber is Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Director of the Center for Molecular Study of Condensed Soft Matter at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Prof. Schieber's research group studies primarily the physical properties of complex fluids, including polymers, liquid crystals, and self-assembled surfactants. The research is devoted to the development of models to predict the relaxation, rheology, diffusion, and optical properties of complex fluids in flow and in dynamic equilibrium. This theoretical work is complemented by experimentation to measure the physical properties of these complex fluids, such as Forced Rayleigh Light Scattering.

Eric Shaqfeh is Professor of Chemical and Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. His research interests involve transport processes associated with materials processing from both theoretical and experimental perspectives. These include the occurrence of elastic instabilities in polymer flows, transport in fiber suspensions, turbulent drag reduction, micro-fluidic devices, and the dynamics of individual DNA molecules in solution undergoing flow.

Stefan Spanier is Assistant Professor of Physics at UTK. He is a node director on the Open Science Grid, Compact Muon Solenoid project. He has extensive expertise in developing, implementing, and administering the type of hardware and software that is built into PolyHub. His expertise thus lies in the development and implementation of our client interfaces, data storage and cataloging, authentification certification, etc.