About

Welcome! This website describes the activities of the research group led by Dr. Christopher D. Cooper, based in the Departament of Mechanical Engineering of Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (USM), in Valparaíso, Chile. Our research interest is in the development of fast and accurate computational models for molecular electrostatics and solvation, mainly using implicit solvent models and boundary integral methods.

News

[2024/05/09] Some of the activities in our group were highlighted in Cooperativa Ciencia, a local news site!
[2024/01/19] Big news: Sergio passed his qualifying exam and is a PhD candidate. Congrats to Sergio! Looking forward to his thesis.
[2024/01/15] Massive turnout of the group in WONAPDE2024, in Concepción. Mauricio, Martín, Miguel, and Christopher presented their results and enjoyed a great conference.
[2023/12/21] New paper! A great collaboration with UK-based friends resulted in a JCC article where we couple finite and boundary elements to overcome some of the limitations behind BEM in electrostatic calculations. Check it out!
[2023/11/12] Sergio and Willy presented their work in the poster session of the Congreso Nacional de Nanotecnología, in beautiful Pucón, Chile.
[2023/10/12] Now it was Byron's turn for an excellent final presentation, continuing Camila's work on quantifying the impact of nonlinearities in the PB equation.
[2023/08/25] Camila Pérez gave her final presentation with flying colors! New top engineer is out. Special thanks to Dr. Marcia Fenley for co-supervising Camila!
[2023/06/26] A lot of the group's work was presented in the Protein Electrostatics Conference in Genova, Italy. The presentation is available on YouTube
[2023/04/28] Paper alert! Ian's undergraduate project is now a publication in JCTC. Want to compute forces accurately? Use BEM!
[2023/03/06] New year, new students. Three Master's students join the group: Eduardo Hasbún and Martín Achondo who come from our own undergraduate program, and Willy Menacho, a physicist from Bolivia.
[2023/03/01] Christopher participated of the SIAM CSE23 conference, with a talk on using BEM for molecular electrostatics.
[2023/02/23] Christopher visited Timo Betcke's group at UCL to work on FEM-BEM coupling for molecular electrostatics, and gave a talk in the UCL-Imperial Numerics Seminar.
[2022/12/05] Now it was Mauricio's turn to excel in his Master's thesis presentation. Congratulations Mauricio, and looking forward to great science during your PhD!
[2022/11/16] Sergio defended his Master's thesis with flying colors. More to come in his PhD!
[2022/10/21] Paper out! A collaboration through the PhD work from visitor Manuel Ruiz is now in JPCB. A very nice study of the interaction of hydrogenases and surfaces with a cool application in hydrogen production!
[2022/08/03] New paper! An application of Ian Addison-Smith's undergraduate thesis to the interaction of a virus capsid with an AFM went into this great piece of work published in Nanoscale. Joint work with Horacio V. Guzmán, from Jozef Stefan Institute. Congrats Ian!
[2022/07/12] Paper alert! First-first author paper for the first PhD student of the group. Congratulations Sergio! His Master's thesis work is now published in JPCB. Great collaboration with Carlos García, from Clemson.
[2022/06/17] Manuel Ruiz, a PhD student working with Guido Raos at Politecnico di Milano, is visiting us for a few months. He will be working on simulations of thermotolerant hydrogenases interacting with surfaces. Looking forward to some great science the coming months!
[2022/06/03] Christopher presents advances of PBJ for polarizable force fields at the Tinker Developer Workshop in Bethesda, MD.
[2022/03/11] Congratulations to the newest ME graduate! Ian got maximum score on his undergraduate thesis work on force calculations with implicit-solvents using BEM.
[2022/02/24] New paper out! Stefan's undergraduate thesis on finding efficient boundary integral formulations of the PB equation made it to JCC. Great collaboration with Elwin van't Wout (PUC).
[2022/02/08] Sergio Urzúa got the highly competitive ANID fellowship to continue his doctoral studies in out group. Looking forward to some great science the next few years!
[2022/01/28] Now it was Elmo Begazo's turn to graduate. His work moved us forward towards generating efficient meshes for molecular surfaces. Great job!
[2022/01/20] New graduate from the group! Kenneth's work on SLIC for hydration asymmetry and PBJ got 100/100. Congrats!
[2021/12/09] Solid presentation from Ignacio Muñoz for his undergraduate thesis work got maximum score. Beautiful work on free energy calculations of nonpolar solvation, co-advised with José Antonio Gárate (Universidad de Valparaíso). Congratulations!
[2021/12/01] Mauricio Guerrero was accepted in the doctoral program to continue working with us towards a PhD. Way to go, Mauricio!
[2021/10/15] Christopher receives an Excellence in Teaching award (Maestro Destacado).
[2021/10/08] Sergio Urzúa and Mauricio Guerrero presented their work in the XIX Jornada de Mecánica Computacional, hosted by USM. Great job Sergio and Mauricio!
[2021/10/07] New website!