Image above: a prototype battery-powered fiber coupled 635nm LED-based light source for photodynamic therapy, curtesy of Prof. Jonathan Celli, UMB Physics
Spring 2026
Talks take place on Tuesdays, from 11am-noon, in ISC-1200
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Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Akira Tanji (Keio University, Japan)
TBA
TBA
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Tuesday, March 24, 2026
No colloquium: Departmental Meeting
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Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Ryotaro Okabe (MIT)
Title: Advancing Quantum Material Discovery with Geometric Machine Learning
Understanding the structure-property relationship is essential in understanding and designing materials with desired functionality. While AI has made significant strides in chemistry and materials, its potential for quantum materials design remains largely untapped. This presentation introduces machine learning frameworks accelerating materials science in two key areas: efficient property prediction and guided materials generation. We introduce Graph Neural Network (GNN) approaches utilizing virtual node strategies for the rapid, high-accuracy prediction of full phonon dispersion from atomic coordinates. This method is orders of magnitude faster than existing potentials, enabling the efficient creation of large-scale phonon property databases critical for materials design. We also present SCIGEN, a generative framework that integrates geometric constraints into a diffusion model to guide the discovery of stable quantum materials candidates. SCIGEN has successfully generated millions of inorganic compounds, with high stability and experimental validation. Together, these GNN-driven approaches showcase a versatile path for both predicting complex material properties and intelligently designing new functional compounds.
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Tuesday, April 7, 2026
Rahul Kulkarni (UMass Boston)
TBA
TBA
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Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Chuteng Zhou (Arms)
TBA
TBA
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Tuesday, April 21, 2026
TBA
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Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Matthew Weiss (UMass Boston)
TBA
TBA
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Tuesday, May 5, 2026
No colloquium: Departmental Meeting
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Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Liang Fu (MIT)
TBA
TBA
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