Tangles, knots and geometric simulation of solvation

Date

Mar 19, 2026

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Myfanwy Evans

Affiliation

University of Potsdam, Germany

Series

MPI-CBG Thursday Seminar

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Host

Heather Harrington

Description

Using periodic surfaces as a scaffold is a convenient route to making periodic entanglements, which are interesting in the context of physics, biomaterials and chemical frameworks. I will present a systematic way of enumerating and characterising new tangled periodic structures, using low-dimensional topology and combinatorics. As a second part, the morphometric approach to solvation free energy is a geometry-based theory that incorporates a weighted combination of geometric measures over the solvent accessible surface for solute configurations in a solvent. I will demonstrate that employing this geometric technique in simulating the self assembly of sphere clusters, viruses and short flexible tubes results in an assortment of interesting geometric structures. This gives insight into the role of shape in the physical process of self assembly.

Last modified: Mar 5, 2026, 7:39:28 AM