[Wien] Computational Physics Ph.D. studentship

[Ilya Elfimov]

Ph.D. studentship position is available within the Advanced Materials
and Process Engineering Laboratory (AMPEL) at the University of
British Columbia (UBC). AMPEL is a multidisciplinary centre with strong
collaborative research in physics, materials science, chemistry, and
engineering. The ideal candidate would have a strong interest in
computational physics. Experience in density functional theory methods
is desirable, although not necessary.

The project: Atomic scale studies of the interaction between solutes
and grain boundaries in magnesium alloys. The successful candidate
will be using full- and pseudo-potential methods of density functional
to study the interaction between solute atoms (e.g. Al, Zn, Mn) and
the grain boundaries in magnesium. The goal is to understand
how the local bonding at grain boundaries is modified by solute
segregation and to compute various critical parameters such as solute
binding energy to grain boundaries and activation energy for trans-
boundary diffusion.

The project is part of broader endeavor to establish direct
connection between atomistic (first principle) calculations and
simulations on both macroscopic and mesoscopic length scales.

The position is available with a nominal starting date of September 1,
2008. Applicants are requested to submit CV and transcripts as soon as
possible directly to Matthias Militzer at militzer at cmpe.ubc.ca and/or
Ilya Elfimov at elfimov at physics.ubc.ca before making an official
application for graduate studies to UBC. Further information on
application procedures for graduate studies can be found at
http://www.physics.ubc.ca/graduate and
http://www.mtrl.ubc.ca/prospective/default.htm, respectively.