Generalized van der Waals Theory of Molecular Fluids in Bulk and at Surfaces

Dr. Sture Nordholm did his research training in statistical mechanics with Robert Zwanzig and continued with postdoctoral research at The University of Chicago with Stuart Rice. His doctoral thesis was on nonequilibrium transport theory and he continued in Chicago working on both fundamental problems in molecular dynamics and theory of liquids. His career then took him to The University of Sydney and finally to The University of Gothenburg. Over his career he has acquired research experience in a broad area of theoretical physical chemistry including reaction rate theory, density functional theory of fluids (both classical and quantum mechanical) and theory of chemical bonding. His publication list includes over 200 articles and a book.

Dr. Clifford Woodward studied at The University of Sydney where he obtained his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry in 1985. His research was focused on the development of the GvdW theory of fluids to account for interactions between polar molecules. He moved on to do research as a postdoc and Research Fellow at The University of Lund in Sweden where, over a five year period, he extended his work into colloidal systems, electrolyte solutions and, particularly, polymer fluids. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at The University of New South Wales, Canberra. His research is in the area of condensed matter physics, including polymer fluids, ionic liquids and cell membrane interactions. In particular, he has made major contributions to the theory of non-uniform polymer fluids and is author of more than 120 articles.

Dr. Jan Forsman did his research training at The University of Lund where he worked on interactions between colloidal particles in dispersions and between ions and charged surfaces in electrolyte solutions. After obtaining his PhD in 1998 he took a position in chemical industry (Chemitec, Perstorp AB) in Sweden but returned to academia after a couple of years. He was a postdoc with Clifford Woodward in Canberra and then returned to The University of Lund where he established himself as a leading expert on both Monte Carlo simulation and density functional theory of molecular fluids including polymer fluids and ionic liquids. He has authored more than 80 research articles.

Dr. Ben Freasier did his research training with K. Runnels at Louisiana State University where he got his PhD in statistical mechanics of lattice models of fluids and interfaces in 1973. He was hired to assist in the setting up of a research group in statistical mechanics at The Royal Military College Duntroon in Canberra which later became the ADFA campus of The University of New South Wales. His research was focused on integral equation theory and simulation of fluids and included early simulations of collisional energy transfer in liquids and novel microcanonical sampling methods. He also has been active in the programming of educational software and commercial computer games and as a general programming consultant. He is a passionate user and occasional lecturer and instructor in the use of the Python programming language. He has published more than 100 research articles.

Dr. Robert Penfold did his research training at The University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where he worked on the development of the GvdW density functional theory for use on electrolyte solutions. He received his PhD in 1993 and then did postdoctoral research at The University of Lund in the theory of fluids combining numerical and analytical mathematical methods in the prediction of physical properties. He subsequently moved to England where he combines part time instruction at The Open University with full time research at The Institute of Food Research in Norwich, East Anglia.

Dr. Zareen Abbas has a PhD in inorganic chemistry from The University of Gothenburg and spent one year as postdoc at The University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has played a major role in the development and implementation of the Corrected Debye-Hückel (CDH) theory of salt solutions and surface complexation. The CDH theory is based on the GvdW density functional theory and permits ion size effects to be semianalytically estimated. He has applied this theory extensively to model activity and osmotic coefficients of simple and mixed electrolytes exploring the generally good accuracy in comparisons with experimental and Monte Carlo simulation data. Recently he has further developed the theory to predict the surface charging of nanoparticles. He has demonstrated that the CDH theory is capable of very accurately resolving the observed size dependency of the particle charge in the case of surfaces composed of SiO2, TiO2 or iron oxides.