John Venables' Current Projects

This file contains an informal list of what John Venables is up to, professionally that is. The people mentioned by name have had a copy of this document. Latest update 11th October 2009.

• My most important current project is to be Program Director for the new Professional Science Masters (PSM) in Nanoscience degree program at ASU. This program can be explored via the Department's PSM homepage, or via my FAQ pages on this site. Currently, we have 14 students on course in the 2009-10 Academic year and this is a satisfying increase from 2 students last Academic year, the first time the degree program was offered. It has already received considerable outside recognition, and I am looking forward to attending the National PSM conference in November.
• I have been teaching Surfaces and Thin Films as a web-based course at ASU, over the past several years most recently in Spring 2009. This course is now being further developed in the context of the PSM in Nanoscience, with the involvement of several "guest" lecturers. My graduate teaching text Introduction to Surface and Thin Film Processes was developed primarily from these lectures. This book is open to the web, both via an appendix containing Web based resources and section by section updates. Both resources can be used with this text and/or the on-line 'lectures'.
• Over several years I have taught a one-semester graduate Quantum Physics class at ASU, which also has a web-based component, though optional in this case. This course is now being given by Dmitry Matyushov, but the pages are being kept up as a resource, since Google says they are widely used. My Sussex course on Quantum Mechanical Models of Solids, was developed in collaboration with Edward Hernández and Malcolm Heggie. It has been given several times, with help from Malcolm's post-docs and senior students, most recently Irene Suarez-Martinez. This material is being kept up on my ASU site as a resource that I (and maybe others) refer to in their current courses.
• I am contributing to some collaborations involving nucleation and growth studies, based on the models developed over the years. These are built around (relatively simple) programs which enable island densities, etc to be interpreted. Most recently, I have been exploring the use of efficient Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Master Equation Discretization (MED) techniques for solving 2-dimensional diffusion equations, in visual models of epitaxial growth that complement rate equations.
• I am pleased to have been welcomed into the London Centre for Nanotechnology at University College London (LCN-UCL) as an Honorary Visiting Professor, and collaborations on the above topics are developing. A list of recent papers, which include this and other collaborations, is given here.
• There is still a lot of work to do on these nucleation and growth models, and I am currently seeing how they can be extended to situations relevant to the hot topics of pattern formation and nanofabrication. In parallel, I have learned some 'newer' programming languages, and have got hooked on MatLab! The idea is to get some material which is more user-friendly, amenable to student projects, and in some cases more compatible with web-based presentation of results.
• The Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film and Crystal Growth Mechanisms was held recently from June 12-17, 2009 at Colby Sawyer College, New London, New Hampshire. I am currently maintaining the historical web pages, which you can consult for further details.