Vassiliy Lubchenko
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Vassiliy Lubchenko
Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002
M.S., Carnegie Mellon University, 1995
M.S., Moscow Institute of Technology, 1994
Department of Chemistry
University of Houston
Houston, Texas 77204-5003
Office: 1021 - SERC
Phone: 832.842.8853
vas@uh.edu
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My research interests include strongly disordered and non-equilibrium
systems, with specific applications to materials science, molecular
electronics, and biophysics.
Our main focus is a self-consistent theory of structural and electronic
excitations in amorphous materials. Several optical and electronic
anomalies that are unique to semiconductor glasses have resisted
systematic efforts for decades, including light induced ESR, midgap
absorption, and insensitivity to conventional doping. Our findings show
these anomalies are not a generic consequence of disorder, but, instead,
result from the high structural degeneracy of glasses. An important
component of our research is the prediction of the structure and
glassforming ability of specific substances of interest in applications,
a task currently inaccessible to computer technology.
As part of the materials science project, we are developing first
principles descriptions of inelastic deformation and fracture failure of
glasses, amorphous solids in general, and other complex materials.
Recent, critical developments in microscopic theories of glass formation
are being used to describe visco-elastic properties of disordered media.
Stress, corrosion, and radiation induced cracking are of basic and
practical interest.
As part of our biophysical research agenda, we are investigating the
microscopics underlying recently discovered puzzling behaviors of
concentrated protein solutions, in collaboration with Peter Vekilov's
group. In conflict with traditional nucleation theories, long-living
aggregates of mesoscopic size are found in such solutions. In addition
to the basic significance of this problem, it is also important in the
context of formation of various solid protein aggregates, such as
crystals and protein fiber arrays implicated in sickle cell anemia.
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