Associate ProfessorToby Hudson

My research is currently focussed on the following areas:

1. Determining how local rearrangement mechanisms in network liquids and glasses achieve stress relaxation, and hence flow. This will also give a detailed picture of how collective processes such as crystallization begin. (with Prof P. Harrowell, Usyd).
2. Optimal dense packing of binary compounds. Combining data-mining and Monte Carlo methods, we have discovered some structures that are able to pack two-component hard sphere systems more densely than if the components were separated and close packed. We are currently optimising these structures, and will determine their contribution to the binary hard sphere phase diagram. This project has application to pressure transitions and densely packed colloidal systems such as opals.
3. Improving structural search algorithms. Numerous artificial intelligence methods have been developed by computer scientists, but applying them to chemical structures is nontrivial. By importing chemically reasonable mechanisms and structures into these methods we are able to sample the structural configuration space fast enough to rapidly equilibrate, or identify ground state structures.

Visit my home page for research activities.http://www.chem.usyd.edu.au/~hudson_t/research.shtml