Welcome to the McGill Physics Computational Materials Science Group

Nikolas Provatas
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Computational Materials Scinece
Department of Physics Rutherford Building,
McGill University, 3600 rue University,
Montreal, Québec H3A 2T8, Canada
[email protected]
Tel: (514) 398-4479


Scientific Director, McGill High Performance Computing Centre,
École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS),
1100 Rue Notre Dame Ouest,
Montreal, Quebec H3C-1K3
Tel: 514 396-8988

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Research interests:
Research in my group lies at the interface of condensed matter physics and materials science. It combines high-performance computing with non-equilibrium thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and experiments to understand the fundamental origins of microstructure evolution in materials processes. These include systems undergoing crystallization from a melt or amorphous phases, multi-phase solidification, particle precipitation, grain growth kinetics and reaction-diffusion processes materials. These systems serve as paradigms for understanding pattern formation in non-equilibrium phase transformations, and have applications to real-world processes. Projects in my group involve the development of theories and computational models that allow a multi-scale representation of materials from the nanoscale to the mesoscale where the emergent properties of materials typically arise. This connection of length scales is achieved by course-graining microscopic theories to yield mesoscale continuum models or sharp-interface models. Models thus developed can also find use in materials engineering applications. Most of the phenomena I study have relevance to industrial materials processing, and some of my research is sponsored by industry.

Prospective Graduate Students:
If you are interested in doing graduate studies at the intersection of high performance computing, materials physics and data science, I encourage you to consider studies in my computational materials science research group, a vibrant group of students working in a frienfly, safe and inclusive environment at McGill. Please contact me directly via email to learn about currrently available openings for graduate students and postdoctotral research positions in my research group, or if you wish to visit my group and meet with my students and postdocs to discuss my research and reseach environment. I welcome and encourage applications from underrepresented groups.

Microstructure Simulation Movies compiled from my group ACSR (Advanced Centre for Serious Research):

About the McGill University High Performance Computing (HPC) Centre:
Please contact me to arrange a visit "Beluga" and "Narwal", the latest and largest academic supercomputing clusters in Quebec, hosted at McGill's data centre at ETS. The centre is a member of Compute Canada and the Calcul Quebec Networks.

Select Papers of the Group
Find all my scientific publications on Google Scholar