Professor Nigel Wilding inaugural lecture: Monte Carlo or bust: smart simulation for serious science

In this inaugural lecture, Professor Nigel Wilding explores the computer simulation of changes of state in models for atoms and complex molecules. Predicting the phase behaviour of a material is a central goal of condensed matter science, and a pre-requisite for designing new materials with tailored or novel phase behaviour. Professor Wilding’s lecture outlined how computer simulation of phase behaviour now stands shoulder-to-shoulder with traditional approaches of experimental and analytical theory. He talk focuses on one particularly powerful and flexible computational technique called ‘Monte Carlo simulation’.