Welcome to the Van Lehn Group!
We are a group in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We develop and apply molecular simulation methods to characterize, predict, and engineer the physicochemical properties of synthetic and biological soft materials. We broadly seek to uncover relationships between nanoscale properties and macroscopic behavior in order to inform materials design, and particularly focus on understanding interactions at complex, multicomponent interfaces. We study a range of systems, including nanoparticles, peptides, surfactants, liquid crystals, and polymers, for applications in drug delivery, environmental sensing, plastic recycling, catalysis, and self-assembly.
Reid promoted to associate professor with tenure!
Reid has received tenure and been named the Hunt-Hougen Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering! We are tremendously grateful to all group members, colleagues, collaborators, and mentors, past and present, who contributed to the …
July 1, 2022Jonathan defends his PhD thesis!
Dr. Jonathan Sheavly is the newest PhD recipient from the Van Lehn group!!! Jonathan defended a thesis entitled “Multiscale Modeling for the Design of Responsive Soft Materials.” Many congratulations to Jonathan – we wish him …
May 9, 2022New paper by Lisa!
Lisa’s new paper, entitled “On the integration of molecular dynamics, data science, and experiments for studying solvent effects on catalysis,” was just published in Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering! The paper reviews the group’s recent work …
February 3, 2022New paper in JCP!
A new paper from Atharva and Brad – “Identifying nonadditive contributions to the hydrophobicity of chemically heterogeneous surfaces via dual-loop active learning” – has been published in the Journal of Chemical Physics! They develop an …
January 10, 2022- More News