Faculty Directory
Trung Nguyen

Research Assistant Professor

Contact

2145 Sheridan Road
Silverman 4759
Evanston, IL 60208-3109

847-491-7808 Email Trung Nguyen

Website

Trung Nguyen Website

Departments

Chemical and Biological Engineering

Education

Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan
M.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan
B.S. Energy Engineering, Hanoi University of Science and Technology

Research Interests

My research is inspired by many fascinating, yet not well understood, phenomena occuring at atomic, molecular and mesocopic scales. For instance, why can random copolymers efficiently stabilize enzymes in organic solvents? how to control the self-assembly of polymer-tethered nanoparticles and DNA-functionalized colloids into micron-sized flawless crystals? why like-charged polydisperse nanoparticles assemble into uniform-sized clusters? The answers to such questions would lead to exciting opportunities for engineering more efficient materials and devices to improve environment-, healthcare- and energy-related applications. With these ultimate goals in mind, I am focusing my current research on (1) developing physical models for better understanding of molecular systems with long-range, many-body interactions, (2) discovering design rules for assembling bio-inspired materials from bottom up using statistical mechanics, molecular simulation and machine learning, and (3) exploring strategies for accelerated sampling in molecular simulation with new sampling algorithms, and with new implementations optimized for hybrid computer platforms including distributed-memory clusters and graphics processing units (GPUs).

Selected Publications

- Nguyen TD, Qiao B, Olvera de la Cruz M, Efficient encapsulation of proteins with random copolymers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 2018, 115:6578-6583.

- Panganiban B, Qiao B, Jiang T, DelRe C, Obadia MM, Nguyen TD, Smith AAA, Hall A, Sit I, Crosby MG, Dennis PB, Drockenmuller E, Olvera de la Cruz M, Xu T, Random heteropolymers preserve protein function in foreign environments, Science 2018, 359, 1239-1243.

- He C*, Nguyen TD*, Edme K, Olvera de la Cruz M, Weiss EA, Non-covalent control of the electrostatic potential of quantum dots through the formation of interfacial ion pairs, Journal of American Chemical Society 2017, 139, 10126-10132. (*: Equally contributed to the work)

- Nguyen TD, GPU-accelerated Tersoff potentials for massively parallel Molecular Dynamics simulations, Computer Physics Communications 2017, 212, 113-122.

- Nguyen TD*, Carrillo JMY, Matheson MA, Brown WM*, Rupture mechanism of liquid crystal thin films realized by large-scale molecular simulations, Nanoscale 2014, 6(6), 3083–3096. (*: Corresponding authors)

- Xia Y, Nguyen TD, Yang M, Lee B, Santos A, Podsiadlo P, Tang Z, Glotzer SC, Kotov NA, Self-assembly of self-limiting monodisperse supraparticles from polydisperse nanoparticles, Nature Nanotechnology 2011, 6, 580-587.

- Nguyen TD, Jankowski E, Glotzer SC, Self-assembly and reconfigurability of shape- shifting particles, ACS Nano 2011, 5, 8892-8903.

Google Scholar Page