The Joint Centre for Materials Exploration in London-Cambridge-Oxford or “JCMaxwell” is CECAM node based in the UK. We are a consortium of five leading UK universities: Imperial College London, King’s College London, University College London, the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, with over 100 research groups engaged in computational materials research. We are dedicated to the promotion of fundamental research on advanced computational methods and their application in science and technology through the organization of scientific workshops and tutorials, outreach events, and an international visitor programme. Our programme of activities is delivered through our established centres and networks including:
- The Thomas Young Centre, the London Centre for Theory and Simulation of Materials and Molecules
- The Lennard-Jones Centre in Cambridge
- The Materials Modelling laboratory, Structural Bioinformatics and Computational Biochemistry and Comp Chem Kitchen all in Oxford
- The Materials and Molecular Modelling Hub
For a list of forthcoming and past events and activities, please visit the links above to the webpages of our centres and networks.
Hosting a Flagship at JCMaxwell
If you would like to host a CECAM Flagship event at the JCMaxwell node, whether in London, Cambridge or Oxford, it is essential that you contact a member of the management board (details below) to discuss the level of support (financial and local organisational and administrative) that the node is able to offer at least two months in advance of the CECAM Flagship proposal deadline (which is usually in July for events taking place the following year). Unfortunately, we will not support proposals submitted to the call without prior agreement.
Also, we would love to see more engagement with the various communities within the UK to help strengthen interactions with the other CECAM nodes within Europe so please get in touch with one of the management board if you have good ideas!
Management Board
Carla Molteni (Node Director) is Professor of Physics at King’s College London and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. She is an expert in atomistic simulations applied to materials and biological systems, and works at the interface of physics with chemistry, materials science and biology. Carla is co-Director of the London Thomas Young Centre for the Theory and Simulation of Materials and is deputy Director of the multidisciplinary Centre for Doctoral Training BiPAS (Biological Physics Across Scales). She is the chair of the management board of the JCMaxwell node of CECAM and member of the Materials and Molecular Modelling Hub, and is the leader of the working group “Molecules, Macromolecules and Biomolecules” of the Psi-K European network. She is also member of the research council of the Italian Embassy in London and of the board of directors of AISUK, the Association of Italian Scientists in the UK.
Phil Biggin is Professor of Computational Biochemistry and Fellow and Tutor at Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford. He works on developing and applying computational methods to examine conformational changes and properties of ligand-binding that occur within receptor proteins, particularly those located in the brain. Better understanding of these aspects will also improve prospects for designing better therapies against conditions such as Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, the effects of stroke, and Parkinson’s disease. To do this, his group uses a technique called molecular dynamics which simulates the motion of all the atoms in the system of interest. The result is a detailed “movie” that not only describes the movements, but also the energetics. The latter can be exploited to make predictions about how tightly certain compounds can bind and is therefore considered extremely valuable for rational drug-design programs. Improving quality of these predictions is an on-going focus of research for his team.
Francesco Gervasio is Chair in Biomolecular Modelling across Multi-scales at University College London and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Geneva. His multidisciplinary research spans computational biophysics, computational chemistry, structural biology, bioinformatics, and drug discovery, and focusses on the development of computational methods to solve challenges in life and chemical sciences. While he was at ETH Zurich (2002-2009), he crucially contributed to the development of widely-used methods for overcoming the timescale problem of molecular dynamics simulations and to compute free energy surfaces, including metadynamics, parallel-tempering metadynamics, and the path-like collective variables method. These “enhanced-sampling” algorithms can efficiently sample complex events in biomolecules computing the associated free energy surfaces and have been implemented in open source codes such as PLUMED (www.plumed.org).
Bartomeu Monserrat is Professor of Materials Physics and Fellow of Robinson College at the University of Cambridge. He works on the development of first principles methods with a focus on phonons and their interaction with other quasiparticles such as electrons and excitons. He applies these methods to study a wide range of problems in areas including superconductors, topological materials, semiconductors, and high pressure physics. He is also the creator and co-host of a YouTube channel, Professor M does Science, dedicated to teaching quantum mechanics at university level.
Arash Mostofi is Professor of Theory and Simulation of Materials in the Departments of Materials and Physics at Imperial College London. He is the Director of the Thomas Young Centre at Imperial College London and a Trustee of the Psi-k Charity, a Europe-based, worldwide network of researchers working on the advancement of first-principles computational materials science. His research is dedicated to the development and application of first-principles modelling tools for the theory and simulation of materials. He is an original author and developer of two major electronic structure simulation codes, ONETEP and Wannier90. His research interests include the electronic and optical properties of 2D materials and twisted 2D heterostructures, adsorbates, defects and interfaces in materials, and multifunctional perovskite and layered perovskite oxides.