Professor Ignasi Pagonabarraga is the new Director of the European Centre for Atomic and Molecular Calculations

Ignasi Pagonabarraga, researcher of the Research Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS).
Ignasi Pagonabarraga, researcher of the Research Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS).
Research
(14/02/2017)

Ignasi Pagonabarraga, member of the Research Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS) is the new Director of the European Centre for Atomic and Molecular Calculations (CECAM), a center of excellence, with its headquarters in EPFL, Lausanne (Switzerland), dedicated to the promotion of essential research on advanced computational methods, and its uses in important problems of the frontier areas between science and technology. The consortium is formed by twenty-three European scientific and administrative institutions. Among these institutions, there is the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain, and the National Center for Scientific Research in France (CNRS).

Ignasi Pagonabarraga, researcher of the Research Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS).
Ignasi Pagonabarraga, researcher of the Research Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS).
Research
14/02/2017

Ignasi Pagonabarraga, member of the Research Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS) is the new Director of the European Centre for Atomic and Molecular Calculations (CECAM), a center of excellence, with its headquarters in EPFL, Lausanne (Switzerland), dedicated to the promotion of essential research on advanced computational methods, and its uses in important problems of the frontier areas between science and technology. The consortium is formed by twenty-three European scientific and administrative institutions. Among these institutions, there is the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain, and the National Center for Scientific Research in France (CNRS).

Regarding the objectives of this period, Pagonabarraga says they have to expand the activities from CECAM to new scientific areas, such as biology or interaction with engineering. He wants to promote the challenges brought to the scientific community by the generation of big data, as well as to develop scientific strategies for its uses.


CECAM, articulated in eighteen European niches, sponsors a program of international visits and promotes the organization of scientific workshops on emerging areas, specialized tutorials for young researchers, workshops on scientific software development, and the development of collaborative research projects at a European level. In this sense, this center is now coordinating the project E-CAM, funded within the program H2020. The objective of the project is the identification and development of a new software with science and business uses in different areas of the study of the materials.


Latest advances in the field of atomic and molecular calculations
The development of new computational methods and increase of the capacity of computation have enabled advancing substantially in the use of computational models to understand, control and predict the properties of systems which are more complex every day.
 

Among the most distinguished advances, during these recent years there have been several big initiatives in the field of materials to be able to predict new materials with specific properties that can substitute current scanning procedures in the laboratory.


There has been an improvement in the study of bimolecular systems, in particular in the analysis of membranes, biomolecules or enzymatic processes. In general, the study of biomolecule kinetics has been launched in realist environments, as well as the compression of tissues and cell aggregates with effective computational models. Another active area is the development of multi-scale methods, those that enable knowing the properties of molecular systems in different degrees of microscope detail, or through systems with different time scales.


Ignasi Pagonabarraga is a professor of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and member of the Research Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS) of the University of Barcelona. His field of research is the theoretic knowledge of collective behavior and emerging properties of the complex physicochemical systems. This research field spreads to the study of systems inspired on biology (molecular motors, etc.). In 2004, Pagonabarraga received the Distinction of the Generalitat de Catalunya for the Promotion of University Research in the category of young researchers, and in 2011 he was honored as outstanding referee by the American Physical Society (APS).