Physics professor receives fellowship honor

April 16, 2015 | News, Research, UToday, Natural Sciences and Mathematics
By Aimee Portala



Dr. Jacques Amar, professor and associate chair of the UT Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, recently was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Amar

Amar

The society fellowship is an honor signifying recognition by one’s professional peers for exceptional contributions to the field of physics. Election to fellowship is limited to fewer than half of 1 percent of American Physical Society members.

“I am honored to have been selected to receive this award. It is gratifying to know that my work has been recognized in this way,” Amar said.

Nominated by the American Physical Society Division of Computational Physics, Amar was cited “for the development and use of novel computational methods, which have advanced our fundamental understanding of a range of problems in condensed matter and statistical physics, including the kinetics of domain growth, surface roughening, crystal growth and thin-film deposition.”

Amar is a computational physicist whose research involves the use of theoretical calculations and simulations to study non-equilibrium processes such as thin-film growth and nanoparticle self-assembly on the atomic scale.

“Many of these processes are poorly understood, so it is important to obtain a fundamental understanding of the key relevant mechanisms and how they depend on experimental parameters,” Amar said. “Since this is often difficult to obtain directly from experiments, these types of calculations and simulations can be very useful.”

As part of his research, Amar uses a variety of methods, including quantum calculations and kinetic Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations. He also is developing methods to carry out accelerated dynamics simulations over longer time and length scales.

Click to access the login or register cheese