Samuel Varner

Program Year:

University:

California Institute of Technology

Field of Study:

Chemical Engineering

Advisor:

Zhen-Gang Wang

Degree(s):

B.S. Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2020

Personal URL:

http://zgwlab.che.caltech.edu/

Practicum Experience(s)

Argonne National Laboratory (2023)

Practicum Supervisor(s):

Juan

Pablo

Practicum Title:

Application of Machine Learned Interatomic Potentials to Interfaces

Summary of Research

Thermodynamics and phase behavior of electrolytes including room temperature ionic liquids. Kinetic pathways to self-assembled nanoscopic materials in charged and neutral polymers.

Annual Program Review Abstracts

Application of Machine Learned Potentials to Bulk and Interfacial Aqueous Solutions (2024)

Entropic Origin of Ionic Interactions in Polar Solvents (2023)

GPU Accelerated Ising Monte Carlo With C++ and Julia (2022)

Publications

Xu, Y.;Varner, S.; Jin, Y.; Perez-Lemus, G. R.; Montes de Oca, J.; Nealey, P. F.; Darling, S.; Galli, G.; Wang, Z.-G.; de Pablo, J.J. Long Molecular Wires and the Autoionization of Water. PNAS (Under Review)

Varner, S.; Balzer, C.; Wang, Z.-G. A Jacobian-Free Pseudo-Arclength Continuation Method for Phase Transitions in Inhomogeneous Thermodynamic Systems. The Journal of Chemical Physics 2024, 161 (6), 064107. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0220849.

Zubieta Rico, P. F.; Schneider, L.; Perez-Lemus, G. R.; Alessandri, R.; Dasetty, S.; Nguyen, T. D.; Menendez, C. A.; Wu, Y.; Jin, Y.; Xu, Y.; Varner, S.; Parker, J. A.; Ferguson, A. L.; Whitmer, J. K.; de Pablo, J. J. PySAGES: Flexible, Advanced Sampling Methods Accelerated with GPUs. npj Comput Mater 2024, 10 (1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-023-01189-z.

Varner, S.; Balzer, C.; Wang, Z.-G. Entropic Origin of Ionic Interactions in Polar Solvents. J. Phys. Chem. B 2023, 127 (19), 4328-4337. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c00588.

Varner, S.; Wang, Z.-G. Effects of Dilution in Ionic Liquid Supercapacitors. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2022, 24 (44), 27362-27374. https://doi.org/10.1039/D2CP03398D.

Awards

Constantin Economou Prize, 2021
McCormack Award from AIChE Chicago Chapter, 2020
Summa Cum Laude (Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science), 2020
High Honors at Northwestern all 6 quarters attended (AU2018-SP2020)