The next inaugural lecture to be held by Mikhail G. Brik

On Feb 14th at 4:15 pm will Mikhail G. Brik, UT professor of computational materials science, hold his inaugural lecture at the University's assembly hall. The lecture is entitled “Perfect imperfections in crystals and computational materials science”.

The lecture will discuss the foundations of modern computational materials science and its wide use in describing and predicting the physical properties of various functional compounds including those with already established use as well as those that have not yet found widespread application. Special attention will be paid to the role played by intentionally created defects (primarily, impurity ions) in crystals.

Without using sophisticated mathematical equations, the principal differences between pure and impurities-bearing crystals will be exposed and the influence of symmetry of the host crystal on the impurity ion’s spectra will be highlighted. Various computational techniques (semi-empirical and DFT-based ab initio models) and their applicability to three-dimensional crystals and structures of lower dimensionality such as surfaces, nanotubes, and graphene sheets, will be briefly described.

The discussion will be supported by examples of theoretical engineering of desired properties of materials (modifications of the absorption and luminescence spectra, elastic constants and phase transitions under various conditions). Many examples will be taken from the published results obtained by the Computational Materials Science Group of the UT Institute of Physics. The final part of the lecture will highlight some of the field’s unsolved problems and challenges.The lecture by Professor Mikhail G. Brik is the fourth in the series of inaugural lectures by UT professors.

Professor Mikhail G. Brik graduated cum laude from the Faculty of Physics of Kuban State University in Krasnodar, Russia in 1992. He received a PhD in solid state physics from the same university in 1995, and started working at the university as a senior lecturer and an associate professor. Before joining the University of Tartu in July of 2007, he had been working for over a year as associate professor at the University of Asmara, Eritrea. Before that, he spent one year as visiting researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and more than four years as visiting researcher at Kyoto University, Japan.

He is recipient of the 2006 Dragomir Hurmuzescu Award of the Romanian Academy of Sciences. In 2009 he was elected Honorary Associate Professor of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. In February 2010 he was elected Professor of Computational Materials Science at the Institute of Physics, University of Tartu. He has made numerous short-term research visits to universities and research centers in Europe, Asia, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Brik’s research interests lie in the field of theoretical calculations and modelling of physical properties of pure and doped optical materials (in particular, those containing transition metal and rare earth ions).

Additional information: Ms Kady Sõstar, public relations specialist, tel +372 737 5685, e-mail: kady [dot] sostar [ät] ut [dot] ee

Anneli Miljan
University of Tartu Press Officer
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