1. Mitch Pindzola Gene Oks Stuart Loch Jianjun (JJ) Dong T.J. Walter Professor of Physics JJ Dong Marcelo Kuroda James Hanson Lucas Guazzotto Yu Lin Joe Perez Kaijun Liu Office: Allison 219, Phone: 334-844-2943 E-mail: dongjia@auburn.edudongjia@auburn.edu Atomic Molecular Condensed Matter / Materials Fusion Plasma Space Physics

2. Scientific Discovery Through Computation “The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. -- Paul Dirac, physicist, 1929

3. Research Focus: Predicting Atomistic Structures and Properties of Materials

4. Recent Projects (1) Structural Transformation Mechanisms and Meta-Stability Conditions of Ceramic Nitrides, Oxides and Oxy-Nitrides (Department Of Energy, BES) (2) First-Principles Calculations of Nano-Structured Crystals (NSF EPSCOR /HRD) Dong et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2000) Tang, Dong, et al, Phys. Rev. B (2008) Xu & Dong, et al, J. Appl. Phys. (2009)

5. Recent Projects – cont’d (3) Thermal Conductivity of Earth’s Lower mantle (NSF-EAR) Earth Minerals: complex structures and compositions Tang & Dong Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci (PNAS) 2010 Tang, Ntam, Dong, et al Geo. Phys. Lett (GRL) 2014

6. Benefits of Cluster Hiring (1)Growth is Inevitable Connected with energy, environment/climate, & health sciences Funding opportunities Education (2) Center on Computational Sciences University level / multiple colleges Consolidate Resources Synergy in research & education (3) Research Computing Infrastructure on Campus Sustainable & User friendly Collaborative -- Sharing ! Sharing ! Sharing (4) New Opportunities: Data-driven computational research in physical sciences Dusty plasma dynamics Observed by E. Thomas Group at Auburn