Sally Bridgwater

Profile

I am a PhD student in the Department of Physics just starting my second year studying the phase behaviour of organic crystals. This is important in a number of fields, e.g pharmaceuticals (manufacture and stability) and human health (cholesterol deposits, kidney stones). I write and adapt Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics methods in my work using the CSC computing at the University of Warwick and the HECToR supercomputer.

My supervisor is Dr. David Quigley with help from Prof. M. P. Allen.

Education

I graduated from the University of Bristol in 2010 with first class honours in MSci Mathematics and Physics, I was particularly interested in statistical mechanics and fluid dynamics. I really enjoyed the freedom and initiative in my masters project on creating a Monte Carlo code to model the hysteresis of bonds between sand grains; this led me to my PhD.

Trips and Courses

2010 CSC / NAG Autumn school on Core Algorithms for High Performance Scientific Computing.

2010-2012 Taking MPAGS courses:

The Physics of Fluctuations by Prof. Juan P. Garrahan
Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics by Prof. M. P. Allen
High Performance Scientific Computing by Dr. David Quigley and Prof. Rudolf A. Roemer

2010 CMMP10 IOP Conference on Condensed Matter and Materials Physics.

2011 Participant at the first CECAM Les Houches School in Computational Physics - Soft Matter.

2011 Participant at CCP5 Methods in Molecular Simulation Summer School.

2011 Participant at HECToR/NAG training course on Fortran 95/2003.

2012 Participant at HECTor/NAG training course on DL_POLY software.

Teaching

2009 Aim Higher Student Associate at Monk's Park Secondary School. Giving teaching assistance during science lessons, taking small groups of GCSE students through coursework and extra work.

2010-2011 Giving A-level revision maths sessions to 1st year physics undergraduates at the University of Warwick.

2011 Demonstrating in computational workshops for the CSC / NAG Autum School on Core Algorithms for High Performance Scientific Computing.

2011-2012 Taking Mathematics for Physicists first year tutorials.

Talks

2010-current Giving talks about current work and papers at Molecular Simulation group meetings.

2012 Invited speaker at CSC Postgraduate day, celebrating the 10th anniversary.

Prizes

Won the 2012 Warwick university, Physics department, second year poster prize.

Current Work

Calculating the melting curve of Gay-Berne ellipsoids.

Gay Berne fluid-solid interface

Reverse engineering a configurational bias Monte Carlo

move for use with Phase Switching Monte Carlo[1] code to

calculate free energy difference between crystal structures.

[1] N. B. Wilding et al Phys. Rev. E, vol 61, 1 (2000)

Calculating the free energy difference between crystal phases of flexible molecules (Butane).