Research Assistant Positions in Non-Equilibrium Matter at UIUC

Motivated and ambitious graduate students who are planning to pursue Ph.D. degrees are invited to join Prof. Yang Zhang’s research group in the area of Non-Equilibrium Matter at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Our research focuses on the study of extreme/non-equilibrium properties of matter using synergistically integrated theories and theory-driven atomistic simulations and neutron and X-ray experiments. In particular, we are interested in a range of fundamental and technical problems involving slow phenomena and rare events, such as the viscous flow of supercooled liquids and glasses, nucleation and crystal growth, folding of polypeptide chains into structured proteins, the self-assembly of micro-units into functional objects, and materials aging and degradation. Our current research can be roughly divided into two areas: 1) extreme properties of liquids; 2) glassy, jammed, and kinetically trapped soft matter.

Immediately, we have a Research Assistants (RA) opening to work on the unconventional phase transitions and critical phenomena of water at interfaces arising from rare quantum fluctuations. The experiments are usually performed at large user facilities at national laboratories in US, Europe, and Asia, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Institut Laue-Langevin, etc. Solid background in physics, mathematics, and programming are essential. Physics, Chemistry, and EECS majors are preferred, but other majors are also welcome.

For more information, please contact:

Yang Zhang Assistant Professor Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Program of Computational Science and Engineering

Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology

Core Faculty Member and Group Leader Computational Molecular Science Group Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Email: zhyang AT illinois DOT edu Web: http://zhang.engineering.illinois.edu