Dear All,
You are most cordially invited to the ICTP Colloquium
on "The weird and wonderful World of Catalysis and how I got
there" by Prof. Michele Parrinello from the
Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, Italy.
The Colloquium will take place today Wednesday 10 September
2025 in the Budinich Lecture Hall at ICTP at 16:00 hrs
CET.
Biosketch:
Michele Parrinello has been full Professor of Computational
Science at ETH Zurich since July 2001. Until March 2003 he was
Director of the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing (CSCS) in
Manno and is now with the Italian Institute of Technology in
Genoa, Italy as Senior Researcher - Principal Investigator:
Atomistic Simulations.
Born in Messina, Italy, in 1945, he obtained his degree in physics
in 1968 from Bologna, Italy. Prior to joining ETH, he was Director
at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart,
Germany, and previous positions include research staff member at
the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, and full
professor at SISSA, Trieste, Italy. He is a former Member of
ICTP's Scientific Council.
Prof. Parrinello's scientific
interests are strongly interdisciplinary and include the study of
complex chemical reactions, hydrogen-bonded systems, catalysis
and materials science. Together with Roberto Car he introduced the
ab-initio molecular dynamics method, which he is still developing
and applying. This method, which goes under the name of
Car-Parrinello method, represents the beginning of a new field
and has dramatically influenced the field of electronic structure
calculations for solids, liquids and molecules.
Abstract:
Catalysis is at the heart of
chemical science and is key to the development of an
environmentally friendly chemical industry, yet the workings of
many key industrial heterogeneous processes like the Haber-Bosch
production of ammonia are poorly understood. This is the result of
a gap that has so far existed between the low temperature regime
at which experiments and theoretical investigations have been
feasible and the high temperature and high pressure operando
conditions. This gap is being closed more slowly by experiments
and more quickly by theory. Progress in theory has been fueled by
the application of machine learning methods to ab-initio-like
molecular dynamics simulations. These simulations have revealed a
very complex behavior in which the presence of the reagents
modifies not only the surface structure but sometimes also the
bulk. An industrial catalyst is not just a support for active
sites but is transformed by temperature and reagents into a highly
fluctuating state of matter in which active sites are continuously
formed and destroyed, thus avoiding poisoning. We shall also
review from a personal perspective the complex and long pathway
that has enabled addressing such a complex problem.
Light refreshments will be
served after the event.
For info, see link: https://indico.ictp.it/event/11104
The Colloquium takes place during the "Conference on Frontiers
in Atomistic Simulations: from Physics to Chemistry and
Biology".
For info on the conference, see link: https://indico.ictp.it/event/10863/
Looking forward to your participation.
With best regards,
Director's Office, ICTP