There are no molds for snowflakes, nor any blueprints for the way many biological structures come together.
Lab work to simulate such self-assembly systems will receive $440,000 in federal grant funding awarded to a University of Arkansas at Fayetteville researcher, the university announced Tuesday.
Matt Patitz, an assistant professor of computer science and computer engineering, won the grant from the National Science Foundation for research to help scientists better understand ways molecules combine autonomously.
His project has two parts, according to a description of Patitz’s work given by the university. Patitz will perform a series of studies that involve fixing certain parameters to test various models’ ability to simulate each other. Another part of his research will study ways systems may simulate biological activities.
According to UA, Patitz and collaborators have done lab experiments as well as mathematical and computational modeling to study self-assembling systems.