A recent survey asked department chairs, faculty, and employers in the Materials Science field to rate the importance of incorporating Computational Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE) into the undergraduate curricula, ways in which it could be incorporated, current offerings in CMSE, software tools that are taught and used, and more. The responses, reported in a 2018 paper published in The Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, “point to a continued need for modules, including software tools and educational materials, that can be readily implemented by materials faculty regardless of their area of expertise." [1] Furthermore, the survey showed that nanoHUB was the most familiar and widely used resource for CMSE education in the United States. 

This hands-on workshop will give you practice using nanoHUB’s free online materials simulation tools to create both atomic visualizations and numerical output that help students understand important materials science concepts. The simulation modules presented have been used in undergraduate materials science and engineering classes at several universities, and cover crystal structures using Ovito, bonding and chemical reactions using DFT, and visualizations of mechanical properties of materials (including dislocation movement, crack propagation, phase transformations and tensile testing) using a LAMMPS-based Molecular Dynamics simulation.

Participants can use these activities to focus on materials concepts, with no need to touch upon computation in detail, or use the activities as a way to introduce the computational techniques that are becoming increasingly important for Materials Engineers.

You will be given ready-to-use activities and individualized help in adapting or creating new lesson material for your own courses, as well as post-workshop support. An introduction to the simulation methods underlying each of the tools will be presented.

Please bring a wifi-enabled laptop computer and create a free nanohub.org account in advance of the workshop.

[1] Enrique, R.A., Asta, M. & Thornton, K. JOM (2018) 70: 1644. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-018-2989-7]

1. computational materials science
2. materials science education
3. nanohub workshop