Wendy
Wei Zhang
New
(soft
matter theory postdoc position)
above posted November 2011
publications
(including preprints)
I am a theoretical physicist working in fluid
dynamics, nonlinear dynamics, soft condensed matter & biologically inspired
physics. I work in the Physics
Department & the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago. I am also a member of the Materials
Research Science & Engineering Center at U. Chicago.
I help organize the Computations in
Science Seminar (Wednesdays KPTC206 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.). The seminar covers scientific phenomena
which “have been computed or can be computed”. Half of our talks are about experimental work, a small fraction are about history of
science and the interaction between science and society. Our goal is to entice folks from
different disciplines to meet regularly and have fun thinking about something
outside their area of expertise.
I check my email twice a day for about 30 minutes. This means if I don’t manage to get to
your email on the day it arrives,
it goes into some random location in an (alas) alarmingly-high
stack. Sorry. For what it is worth, I do get to
emails eventually.
Group meetings: Once a month we
hold a public group meeting where one of us gives a talk for about 30, 35
minutes, with a proper introduction to the problem under study as well as some
context and motivation. It is a
fun way for us to get feedback from everyone, and for everyone to find out what
we are up to. Please join us. (The meeting times are the 2nd Thursday
of every month, from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. in GCISE123.)
If you are an undergraduate interested in doing research in our
group or in this general area, the best way to participate is to apply to the
Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program hosted by the Physics
Department and the Materials Reserach Engineering & Science Center at the
University of Chicago. This
program takes place every summer.
If you are an undergraduate
at the University of Chicago and would like to explore the possibility of doing a senior
thesis within our
group, please contact me early.
The thesis project is more likely to have that extra little spark, provide more
opportunities for independent endeavor, and less “cook-book” if we have a few
months before the Autumn quarter of your senior year to think up and try out
different options. Note I said more
likely. As with all worthwhile things in life,
there is no guarantee.
There are research
opportunities for beginning graduate students in our group. If you are interested, see paragraph
above. The difference is that the
time-scale is longer, the uncertainty greater, and, as a bonus, you get to do some,
maybe all, of work in formulating the problem.
If you are interested in doing
a postdoc within
our group, there is no position open right now. We also participate in the James Franck Institute’s
Condensed Matter Theory postdoc search, which aims to hire postdoctoral fellows
whose work is broadly interesting to the different theory groups in the
JFI. Last year’s search has
closed. Please keep your eyes on
the web page for next year. The
deadline for the application is usually December 1.