ETH Zürich, Switzerland (ETH), [Professor M. Parrinello]
Main Role in the Project: The group of Prof. Parrinello has long experience in the field of ab-initio and classical simulation techniques. Recently it is actively engaged in developing methods that are able to overcome the length and time scale limitations of numerical simulations. These new techniques are able to investigate reactive processes of complex systems, such as chemical reactions in different environments, kinetics processes of molecular machines and conformational changes in biological processes.
Principal Scientist: Michele Parrinello is Director of the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing (CSCS) and Professor at ETH Zurich. His scientific interests include the study of complex chemical reactions, hydrogen-bonded systems, soft matter, catalysis and materials science. For his research he has been awarded numerous prizes, including the 2001 Award in Theoretical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, the 1995 Rahman prize of the American Physical Society and the 1990 Hewlett-Packard Europhysics prize. He is one of the most highly cited scientists and a member of numerous academies.