Alejandro Rey

Research Interests

• The Materials Modeling Research Group’s mission is to develop fundamental and applied science and engineering of structural and functional materials systems, energy storage materials, environmental materials, packaging and membrane materials, electro-optical and sensor devices, biological membranes, biological polymer processing, and biomimetics. Multiscale theory and simulations, ranging from atomistic to macroscopic, are used model the synthesis, processing, characterization, and performance of materials and devices. The validation of our multiscale simulations is done through extensive international collaborations with experimental groups, academic and industrial research centers, and government laboratories.

  Research Areas

  • Computational Material Science of Structural and Functional Materials, Thermodynamics, Rheology and Interfacial Science of Soft and Biological Materials, Biological Polymer Processing, Biomimetics, Liquid Crystals.

Professional Appointments

• Olaf Hougen Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin at Madison, September 1, 2006-December 9, 2006
• MCGILL UNIVERSITY, DEPT. OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
• James McGill Professor, appointed on January 1, 2002
• Full Professor, from January 1999 to December 31, 2001
• Associate Professor, from June 1994 to December 1998
• Assistant Professor, from September 1988 to June 1994

  Memberships in Professional Societies and Centers

  • Canadian Society of Chemical Engineers
  • Chemical Institute of Canada
  • American Institute of Chemical Engineers
  • Society of Rheology
  • Materials Research Society
  • Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films, NSF-Clemson University-MIT
  • Center of Non-Linear Dynamics in Physiology and Medicine, McGill University
  • Center of Self-Assembled Materials, McGill University
  • McGill Institute of Advanced Materials, McGill University

Selected Awards and Honors

• Class of '51 Outstanding Teacher Award, McGill University 1993
• James McGill Professor, McGill University 2002
• Best Poster Award, 4th annual NSF site visit, Center for Advanced Fibers and Films, Clemson University, 2002
• Editorial Board, Sustainable World, WIP, England, 2003
• Best Poster Award, 5th annual NSF site visit, Center for Advanced Fibers and Films, Clemson University, 2003
• Selected Paper Award: G. de Luca and A.D. Rey, “Chiral Front Propagation in Liquid Crystalline Materials: Formation of the Twisted Plywood Architecture of Biological Fibrous Composites”, Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research, vol. 7, Issue 3 (2004)
• Selected Paper Award: G. de Luca and A.D. Rey, “Chiral Front Propagation in Liquid Crystalline Materials: Formation of the Twisted Plywood Architecture of Biological Fibrous Composites”, Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research, vol. 7, Issue 3 (2004).
• Best Poster Award, 7th annual NSF site visit, Center for Advanced Fibers and Films, Clemson University, Computational Modeling of Texture Formation in Mesophase-Pitch-Based Carbon-Carbon Composites, with Gaurav Gupta, 2005.
• Selected Paper Award: Dynamic interactions between nematic point defects in the extrusion duct of spiders,Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research, 11, Issue 8 144904-8 (2006).
• Olaf A. Hougen Professorship, Department of Chemical Engineeering, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1/09/06-07/12/06.
• Olaf A. Hougen Lectures, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Lecture I: September 27, Lecture II: November 21, 2006.
• Selected Paper Award:"A Flexoelectric Membrane Model", Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research, Volume 12, Issue 3, 0117101-01171011 (2006).
• Editorial Board, Journal of Design and Nature, WIP, England, 2006.
• Distinguished University Lectureships, Old Dominion University,Virginia, February 20, 2007.
• Editorial Board, WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 2007.
• NSERC Direct Accelerator Grant Award, June 2008 ($120,000) (only Chem. Eng. awardee in 2008)
• Keynote Lecture, 2008 International Congress on Rheology, Monterey CA, USA.
• Best Poster Award, Materials Research Society Fall Meeting 2008, Boston MA, USA. Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of palladium (II) acetylacetonate and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. F08 Symposium W, W6.20
• Editorial Board, Soft Matter, May 2009
• James McGill Professor, McGill University, May 2009
• Research Excellence Award, Faculty of Engineering, McGill University May 2009
• Best Poster of the Conference Award, Materials Research Society Fall Meeting 2009, Boston MA, USA. First-principles modeling of hydrogen interaction with a carbon supported palladium cluster. Symposium LL, LL05.13

Selected External Activities

• Organizing Committee, 33rd International IUPAC Symposium on Macromolecules, Montreal, July 8-13,1993
• Session Chairman, International Congress of Rheology, Quebec, August 96
• Session Chairman, CSChE 50th Congress, Montreal, October, 2000
• Session Chairman, MRS Fall Meeting, December 2000
• Session Chairman, 3rd Pacific Rim Conference on Rheology, Vancouver, July, 2001
• Session Chairman, MRS Fall Meeting, December 2001
• Session Chairman, Institute of Theoretical Physics, School of Complex Fluids UC Santa Barbara, May 2002
• Session Chairman, 1st International Conference on Design and Nature, Institute of Mechanics, Udine, July 2002
• Visiting Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1999
• Visiting Professor, College of Fibers and Textiles, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001
• Organizing Committee, 2nd International Conference on Design and Nature, Rhodes, June 2004
• Session Chairman, 2nd International Conference on Design and Nature, Rhodes, June 2004
• Organizing Committee, SAMSI Workshop, Chapel Hill, February 15-17, 2004
• Session Chairman, SAMSI Workshop, Chapel Hill, February 15-17, 2004
• Session Chairman, Rheology International Conference, Seoul, August 22-28, 2004
• Member of Editorial Board: Design&Nature (06/08/2004)
• International Scientific Advisory Committee: 3rd International Conference “Comparing Design in Nature with Science and Engineering" 2006.
• Organizing Committee, 3rd International Conference on Design and Nature, Wessex, June 2006.
• National Science Foundation Site Visit Team Member, Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers, April 26-28, 2006.
• Adjunct Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Clemson University, April 28, 2006.
• Session Chairman, 3nd International Conference on Design and Nature, Wessex, June 2006.
• Tenure Committee, External Member, University of Tennesses, November 24, 2006
• Tenure Committee External Member, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California August 28,2006.
• PhD Committee External Member, Department of Chemical Engineering, Clemson University November 27, 2006.
• Program Committee Member, IASTED International Conference on Modern Nonlinear Theory, MNT 2007, Montreal , Quebec , May 30-June 1, 2007.
• Invited Participant, Multiscale Modeling and Simulation of Complex Fluids, Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling, University of Maryland, April 13-20, 2007.

Laboratory Facilities

The Materials Modeling Research group facilities are comprised of two locations, the graduate lab (room 6040) and computer room (room 6020). The graduate lab contains individual research stations with desktop computer and printer access. Access is provided to workstations directly situated in the lab and remotely to computational servers through a high-speed intranet. Within the graduate lab, three work stations are available for prototyping simulations and post-processing. These workstations have adequate computing power for this task, each having single dual-core processors (Opteron-class) and 8Gb of RAM. The computational servers are located in a separate area which provides the appropriate environment and monitored security. A scalable rack system is installed with a capacity of up to 28 individual servers (1U form factor) including backup power supply. The current server set includes two 4-core 32Gb units, two 8-core 64Gb units using AMD Opteron dual-core high-efficiency processors and one 16-core 128Gb unit using AMD Opteron quad-core high-efficiency processors. Additionally, each unit is equipped with 1.5Tb of redundant storage (RAID5) and a pedestal server (separate from the rack system) with 3.5Tb of redundant storage is used for weekly backups. Delivery is pending for one more 16-core 128Gb unit. The use of high-efficiency processors allows for lower cooling and power usage which greatly offsets the initial cost through savings in power consumption both from the unit operation and cooling. Access to supercomputing facilities is available through CLUMEQ (Consortium Laval, Universite du Québec, McGill and Eastern Quebec). These facilities provide limited access to three separate units: a 256 core (Xeon-class, 2 cores per node) 512Gb (4Gb per node) cluster, a 64 core (SGI) 128Gb shared-memory system, and an 84 core (Opteron-class, 4 cores per node) 168Gb (8Gb per node) cluster. Access to these systems is shared with other researchers in the area. This limits the availability of the full capacity of the systems such that wait times are on the order of weeks.

Computational Softwares

• Comsol Multiphysics, Comsol Group, version 3.4
• Comsol Script, Comsol Group, version 3.4
• VLXE Polymer and Complex Fluids, VLXE Excel version 2.6
• MATLAB, The Mathworks, version R2008a
• CPMD, CPMD consortium, version 3.11.1
• LibMesh, University of Texas at Austin, version 0.6.2

Benefactors

The Materials Modeling Research Group is pleased to acknowledge generous financial support from the following government and industrial sources:

• McGill University: (1) McGill Computing Center (2)James McGill Professor Program
• Canadian Government: (1) Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
• Quebec Government: (1)FCAR (2)FQNRT
• Foreign Institutions: (1)Center for Advanced Fibers and Films, Clemson University (USA) (2)Petroleum Research Fund, American Chemical Society (USA)
• Foreign Governments: (1)Air Force Office of Scientific Research (USA) (2)National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Fibers and Films, Clemson University-MIT-Clark Atlanta University (USA)
• Industry: (1)NOVA CHEMICALS (2)NEC

Research Group and Projects

Computational Material Science of Structural and Functional Materials

• 1. Molecular Modeling of Microporous Carbonaceous Materials ( S. Mushrif, PhD candidate)
• 2. Molecular Modeling of Hydrogen Storage on Activated Carbon Fibers( S. Mushrif, PhD candidate , and Professor Dan Edie, CAEFF and Clemson University)
• 3. Molecular Modeling of Carbonaceous Mesophase Mixtures ( M. Golmohammadi, PhD candidate and Prof. A. Ogale, CAEFF and Clemson University )
• 4. Computational Modeling of Carbon-Carbon Nano-and Micro-composites ( M. Golmohammadi, PhD candidate and Prof. A. Ogale, CAEFF and Clemson University)
• 5. Computational Modeling of Electro-Optical Devices ( G. de Luca, PhD candidate, and Prof. M. Srinivasarao, Georgia Institute of Technology)
• 6. Computational Polymer Rheo-Optics and Rheo-X-rays
• 7. Computational Thermodynamics of Compressible Polymer Solutions ( Dr. M. Ghiass)
• 8. Molecular Simulation of Polymer Nanocomposites ( Dr. M. Ghiass)
• 9. Computational Modeling of Flow-Induced Nucleation and Crystallization in Polymer Melts (N. Abukhdeir, PhD candidate)
• 10. Computational Modeling of Smectic Liquid Crystals (N. Abukhdeir, PhD candidate)
• 11. Computational Thermodynamics of Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystals ( with Dr E. Soule, and Professor R. Williams, Universidad de Mar del Plata, Argentina)
• 12. Computational Rheology of Liquid Crystal Polymers ( with Profs. C. Cox , A. Ogale, CAEFF and Clemson University).
• 13. Hydrodynamic Interactions in Textured Liquid Crystal Polymers ( with Prof. J.J. de Pablo , UW-Madison)

Biological Polymer Processing

• 1. Spider Silk Biospinning ( G. de Luca, PhD candidate)
• 2. Biological Fibrous Composites

Biomimetics

• 1. Computational Modeling of Plant Morphogenesis ( with Professor D.Pasini, McGill)
• 2. Computational Modeling of Plant Cell Wall ( with Professor D. Pasini, McGill)

Biological Membranes

• 1. Computational Modeling of Flexoelectric Membranes
• 2. Rheology and Dynamics of Membranes
• 3. Protein-Protein Interaction in Biological Membranes

Sensors and Biosensors

• 1. Computational Modeling of Liquid Crystal Biosensors ( B. Wincure, PhD candidate)
• 2. Statistical Mechanics of Protein Adsorption ( M. Savedra de Lucio)
• 3. Gas Sensors based on Chiral Liquid Crystal Optics

Alumni with Academic Appointments

• Won Hee Han (PhD 95): Associate Professor, Dept. of Chem. Eng., Don Yang University, South-Korea
• Philip Chan (PhD 97): Associate Professor, Dept. of Chemical Eng., Ryerson University, Canada.
• Tomohiro Tsuji (PDF 96-98): Associate Professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Kochi University of Technology, Japan.
• Luiz de Andrade Lima (PDF 00-05): Assistant Professor, Departamento de Ciencia e Tecnologia dos Materias, University Federal of Bahia, Salvador Bahia, Brazil.
• Dana Grecov (PDF 00-05): Assistant Professor, Departament of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Canada.
• Susanta Kumar Das (PDF 00-05): Assistant Professor, Departament of Mechanical Engineering, Kettering University, USA.

Alumni Research Awards

• Selecetd Paper, Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research, vol. 7, Issue 3 Gino de Luca, M.Eng. (2004).
• G. Brown Award (International Award for Best PhD Thesis in Liquid Crystals) Won Hee Han, PhD. (1995).
• Selected Paper, Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology B. Wincure, (PhD) Volume 14, Issue 2 (2006).
• Selected Paper, Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research, Gino de Luca (PhD) , volume 11, Issue 8 144904-8 (2006).
• Best Poster Award, 7th annual NSF site visit, Center for Advanced Fibers and Films, Clemson University Gaurav Gupta ( M.Eng.) July 5 ( 2005 )
• Ferrari Innovation Scholarship (Italy) Gaurav Gupta ( M.Eng.) (2005).
• Selected Paper, Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research, D. K. Hwang (PhD) , Volume 12, Issue 10, 174902-1-9 (2006).
• Best Poster Award Finalist, "Science as Art" Competition, Materials Research Society Fall 2008 Meeting, Boston, USA. Samir Mushrif (Ph.D.)