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Welcome to the MuthComp Group

We are developing the interface of Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Biophysics and Scientific Computing, focusing on multiscale phenomena in complex fluids, functional materials, cell biology and active matter, for engineering design and discovery of next-generation multifunctional soft materials.

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Concurrent Coupling of Heterogeneous Solvers
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DeepONet to Approximate Nonlinear Continuous Operators
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Coupled Diffusion-Reaction Kinetics and Blood Flow Dynamics
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Stimuli-Responsive Smart Materials in Flows
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Wetting/dewetting Dynamics on Heterogeneous Surfaces
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Learning Constitutive Closure Models for Multiscale Complex Fluids
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Mathematical Theory for Coarse-Graining and Model-Reduction
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Physics-Informed Neural Network Models


NEW Openings available, please click here for details.


RESEARCH INTERESTS:

  • Machine Learning Methods for Multiscale Problems.
  • Mathematical Theory of Multiscale Modeling, Coarse-Graining and Model Reduction.
  • Mesoscale Methods and Mesoscopic Phenomena.
  • Multiscale/Multiphysics in Complex Fluids and Soft Matter.
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RECENT NEWS:

  • 02/20/2024: Congratulations to Prof. Zhen Li for being honored with the CECAS Dean’s Professor Award in the School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering. This professorship recognizes a sustained record of excellence in teaching, research, scholarship and service to Clemson University.
  • 1/10/2024: Welcome Ryan Wan to join the MuthComp research group as a PhD student.
  • 1/1/2024: Welcome Ezhin Aliahmadi to be a PhD student, who is transferred from ME Masters' program. Congratulate Ezhin on her new role in the MuthComp group to explore the topic of multiscale physics in complex fluids.
  • 12/27/2023: PhD student Ali Mohammadi's second journal paper titled "Brownian motion of soft particles near a fluctuating lipid bilayer" has been published in the Journal of Chemical Physics. Congratulations to Ali. (see DOI: 10.1063/5.0182499)
  • 12/1/2023: our paper "Arbitrary slip length for fluid-solid interface of arbitrary geometry in smoothed particle dynamics" was published in Journal of Computational Physics. (see DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2023.112509)
  • 11/19/2023: PhD student Faisal Tushar and Prof. Zhen Li attended the 76th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (see APS/DFD 2023.) held in Washington, DC. Prof. Li chaired the session J36 "Multiphase Flows: Computational Methods III" and gave an oral presentation on "Inferring multiscale bubble growth dynamics by deep neural operator learning". Faisal Tushar did an oral presentation titled "Accelerated transport of highly viscous liquid through microchannels by multiphase flow over superhydrophobic surface".
  • 10/20/2023: PhD student Miles Lu participated in the 2023 Mechanical Engineering Pi-MT presentation competition at Clemson University and won the 2nd place award. Congratulations to Miles!
  • 10/11/2023: PhD student Miles Lu and Prof. Zhen Li attended the 2023 Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science (see SES 2023.) hosted by the University of Minnesota. Prof. Li organized and chaired the minisymposium MS10 "Multiscale Modeling and Mechanics of Soft Matter and Hierarchical Materials" and gave an oral presentation on "Deep neural operator for learning transient response of composites". Miles Lu did a poster presentation titled "Deep Neural Operator for Learning Transient Response of Interpenetrating Phase Composites Subject to Dynamic Loading".
  • 9/18/2023: PhD student Miles Lu attended the 2023 EFRC-Hub-CMS-CCS PI Meeting to present a poster titled "Predicting Transient Response Of Composites Subject To Dynamic Loading Using Deep Neural Operator Learning". He also participated in the 100-Second Lightning Talk Challenge as the representative of our DOE/EFRC/AIM research center in this meeting.
  • 09/12/2023: Welcome Shun Tomizawa to visit the MuthComp group from the University of Tokyo, Japan. He has been granted a Study Abroad “Musha Syugyo” Program opportunity to visit the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. Shun will collaborate with Muthcomp group members to perform cell-resolved blood flow simulations in experiment-based vascular networks of zebrafish with comparison to zebrafish experiments.
  • 8/24/2023: Prof. Zhen Li gave an invited talk on "Deep neural operator for learning transient response of composites subject to dynamic loading" in the minisymposium MS719 Recent Advances in Numerical PDE and Scientific Machine Learning at the 10th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM 2023) held in Tokyo, Japan.
  • 7/3/2023: As the Guest Editor, Prof. Zhen Li organized the Applied Mathematics and Mechanics Special Issue “Machine-Learning Approaches for Computational Mechanics”, which has been published as the AMM July Issue: Vol. 44, Issue 7.
    Based on the latest Clarivate Journal Citation Reports 2022, Applied Mathematics and Mechanics is ranked 5th out of 267 Applied Mathematics journals (Q1), and ranked 26th out of 137 Mechanics journals (Q1), with a journal impact factor of 4.4.
  • 6/9/2023: Prof. Zhen Li attended the 2023 Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Conference and gave a talk on "Multiphase dissipative particle dynamics modeling of dynamic spreading of a molten sand droplet" in the minisymposium "Meshfree, Peridynamic, and Particle Methods: Contemporary Methods and Applications".
  • 5/15/2023: PhD student Miles Lu accepted a DOE National Laboratory Summer Internship offer and starts his 3-month research journey at Idaho National Laboratory.
  • 5/6/2023: PhD Students Miles Lu and Ali Mohammadi's joint paper "Deep neural operator for learning transient response of interpenetrating phase composites subject to dynamic loading" was published in Computational Mechanics. (see DOI: 10.1007/s00466-023-02343-6)
  • 4/11/2023: Prof. Zhen Li was invited to give a talk on "Generation of rough surfaces with desired statistic features by training a LSTM neural network" at the 2023 ARL SMASH Hypersonic Workshop.
  • 4/7/2023: Prof. Zhen Li gave an invited talk on "Physics-Guided Machine Learning" at the 2023 Automotive AI Summit.
  • 4/6/2023: Visiting PhD student Piet Jarmatz and Prof. Zhen Li participated in the 2023 Showcase for Science As Art – Visual Representation of STEM Event.
  • 3/24/2023: PhD student Miles Lu and Prof. Zhen Li participated in the 2023 Annual SIAM-SEAS Conference, where Prof. Li gave an invited talk on "Deep neural operator for learning transient response of composites subject to mechanical loading".
  • 2/28/2023: our paper “PPINN: Parareal physics-informed neural network for time-dependent PDEs” was featured as one of the Most Cited Articles in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering. (300+ citations since its publication in late 2020, see DOI: 10.1016/j.cma.2020.113250)
  • 2/24/2023: PhD students Miles and Ali participated in the Annual ME Poster Showcase to present their recent research on deep neural operator approaches for predicting mechanical response of composite materials.
  • 2/1/2023: Welcome Piet Jarmatz to visit the MuthComp group from Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Germany. He will explore supervised parallel-in-time algorithms applied for molecular-continuum coupling in collaboration with MuthComp members.
  • 1/16/2023: our paper "A Mori–Zwanzig Dissipative Particle Dynamics Approach for Anisotropic Coarse Grained Molecular Dynamics" was published in Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation. (see DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.2c00960)
  • 1/1/2023: Welcome Ali Mohammadi to be a PhD student, who is transferred from ME Masters' program. Congratulate Ali on his new role in the MuthComp group to explore the anomalous transport phenomena of active matter in non-equilibrium processes.

  • 11/4/2022: Dr. Yidong Xia from DOE Idaho National Laboratory was invited to visit Clemson's ME Department and gave a Departmental Seminar entitled "The Role of Particle Flow Modeling in Energy Source Research: Case I: Hydrocarbon and Water Flow in Nanoporous Media; Case II: Cellulosic Biomass Granular Flow in Biorefineries", which is the first in-person ME Departmental Seminar after the pandemic. Faculty and students from both Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering attended this wonderful seminar.
  • 10/16/2022: Prof. Zhen Li co-organized a minisymposium “Multiscale Modeling and Mechanics of Soft Matter and Hierarchical Materials” at the 2022 Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science (SES). (see SES 2022.)
  • 10/4/2022: our paper "Quantifying the dynamic spreading of a molten sand droplet using multiphase mesoscopic simulations" was published in Physical Review Fluids. (see DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.103602)
  • 09/30/2022: Prof. Zhen Li, as an affiliated faculty of Artificial Intelligence Research Institute for Science and Engineering (AIRISE), attended the Fall 2022 Clemson AI Collaboration - New Faculty Welcome event, organized by AIRISE, Watt AI, and the CU-MUSC AI Hub.
  • 09/29/2022: Prof. Zhen Li was invited to give a Physics & Astronomy Colloquium at Clemson University on "Scale-Bridging in Fluid Systems through Multiscale Modeling and Machine Learning Approaches".
  • 09/16/2022: Prof. Zhen Li was invited to visit the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UNC Charlotte and gave a colloquium on "Memory Effects in Coarse-Grained Modeling of Soft Matter".
  • 08/29/2022: Welcome Salahudin Sheikh to visit the MuthComp group from Toulouse INP, France. He will study anomalous transport processes in emulsion systems in collaboration with MuthComp members including Faisal Tushar and Ali Mohammadi.
  • 08/17/2022: Prof. Zhen Li received a DOE/EFRC grant as Thrust lead co-PI entitled "Artificially Intelligent Manufacturing Paradigm for Composites (AIM for Composites)", which is Clemson's first EFRC.
  • 08/15/2022: Welcome Ezhin Aliahmadi to join the MuthComp group. She will start her journey in scientific research at Clemson to explore the multiphase phenomena and physics-informed machine learning methods.
  • 07/25/2022: Prof. Zhen Li participated in the 2022 NSF CSSI PI meeting held in Alexandria, VA and presented a poster titled "Collaborative Research: Elements: SciMem: Enabling High Performance Multi-Scale Simulation on Big Memory Platforms". (see DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6858186)
  • 07/15/2022: Raja Villareal (a high school student) from the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics (GSSM) finished his Summer Program for Research Interns (SPRI) project in the MuthComp group and introduced his research results via a poster presentation titled "Exploring the microphase separation of thermoresponsive polymers induced by temperature changes" in the SPRI Poster Session 2022.
  • 06/27/2022: Prof. Zhen Li gave an invited talk entitled "Long-Time Mesoscopic Simulation of Microvascular Blood Flow in Zebrafish Enabled by a Multiscale Parallel-in-Time Method" virtually in the 2022 Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC) Conference held in Basel, Switzerland, June 27-29, 2022.
  • 06/25/2022: our paper "Flow Reduction in Pore Networks of Packed Silica Nanoparticles: Insights from Mesoscopic Fluid Models" was published in Langmuir. (see DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.2c01038)
  • 06/23/2022: Prof. Zhen Li and his graduate student, Ali Mohammadi, participated in the 19th U.S. National Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNC/TAM) held in University of Texas at Austin, June 19-24, 2022. Dr. Li gave an invited talk on "Long-time Mesoscale Fluid Dynamics Simulation Enabled by a Supervised Parallel-in-time Method", and Ali presented his research on "Directed Anomalous Transport of Self-Propelled Nanoparticles in Newtonian Fluid with Thermal Gradients".
  • 05/24/2022: our paper "Theory and simulation of electrokinetic fluctuations in electrolyte solutions at the mesoscale" was published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics. This article has been published as Open Access via an agreement between Clemson University and Cambridge University Press. (see DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2022.377) [Open Access]
  • 05/20/2022: our paper "An energy-conservative many-body dissipative particle dynamics model for thermocapillary drop motion" was published in Physics of Fluids. (see DOI: 10.1063/5.0088238)
  • 05/19/2022: Prof. Zhen Li gave an invited virtual live seminar on "Mathematical Foundation of Coarse-Graining and Machine-Learning Methods Applied to Multiscale Problems" in the Center of Mathematical Sciences at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
  • 05/17/2022: Prof. Zhen Li received an NSF grant as co-PI entitled "CDS&E: HAM3R: Heterogeneous Automated Management of Multiscale Methods and Resources".
  • 05/08/2022: The MuthComp group participated in the 3-day Annual Artisphere Festival at Greenville. As part of the Clemson University’s STEAM Exhibit, the MuthComp booth has served more than 100 families with kids to have their first ever supercomputer experience using Clemson's Palmetto cluster. Kids and adults experienced themselves the power of Clemson's supercomputer by performing a hand-on tutorial of high-performance scientific computing and playing with their own 3D simulation movies. See photos in Gallery.
  • 04/20/2022: Prof. Zhen Li acts as the Guest Editor of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (A traditional Springer journal, Q1 in Applied Math, Q2 in Mechanics, IF is 3.918) to organize a Special Issue on "Machine-Learning Approaches for Computational Mechanics" to be published in early 2023.
  • 04/11/2022: Congratulations to Prof. Zhen Li for winning the Award of Excellence - Junior Faculty for 2021-2022.
  • 03/09/2022: our paper "Multiphysics and multiscale modeling of microthrombosis in COVID-19" was published in PLOS Computational Biology. (see DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009892)
  • 02/25/2022: Congratulations to our team member Jonathan Despeaux, who was awarded by the Undergraduate Research Grants from the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences at Clemson University to support his on-going undergraduate research.
  • 02/01/2022: our recent paper on blood flows in retinal microaneurysms has been highlighted on the Cover of PLOS Computational Biology in the first issue of 2022. (see Journal Cover Article)
  • 01/13/2022: our paper "Multiscale computational framework for predicting viscoelasticity of red blood cells in aging and mechanical fatigue" was published in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering. (see DOI: 10.1016/j.cma.2021.114535) [50 Days' Free Access]
  • 01/05/2022: our paper "Computational investigation of blood cell transport in retinal microaneurysms" was published in PLOS Computational Biology. (see DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009728)
  • 10/26/2021: our paper "A seamless multiscale operator neural network for inferring bubble dynamics" was published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics. (see DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2021.866)
  • 10/18/2021: Prof. Zhen Li gave an invited talk on "Parallel computing technology and accelerated convergence algorithms" in the symposium "Machine Learning Methods in Fluid Mechanics" at the 21st IACM (International Association for Computational Mechanics) Computational Fluid Conference (CFC 2021) (CFC 2021).
  • 09/30/2021: our paper "Flow reduction of hydrocarbon liquid in silica nanochannel: Insight from many-body dissipative particle dynamics simulations" was published in Journal of Molecular Liquids. (see DOI: 10.1016/j.molliq.2021.117673) [50 Days' Free Access]
  • 08/25/2021: our paper "Multiscale parareal algorithm for long-time mesoscopic simulations of microvascular blood flow in zebrafish" was published in Computational Mechanics. (see DOI: 10.1007/s00466-021-02062-w)
  • 08/19/2021: Prof. Zhen Li co-organized a symposium on the topic of "Multiscale Methods and Mechanics of Soft Matter and Hierarchical Materials" in 19th U.S. National Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics to be held June 19-24, 2022 in Austin, Texas (USNC/TAM 2022). USNC/TAM is held every four years. If you are interested in joining us, please submit your abstract to the mini-symposium MS-322 by December 18, 2021.
  • 08/12/2021: The MuthComp research team, including Zhen Li, Faisal Tushar, Ali Mohammadi and Jonathan Despeaux attended the IMA (Institute for Mathematics and its Applications) Workshop on the Mathematical Foundation and Applications of Deep Learning [Link].
  • 07/28/2021: Prof. Zhen Li gave an invited talk on "Parareal Physics-Informed Neural Network for Solving Time-Dependent PDEs" in the symposium "Multiscale Methods and Data-Driven Models" at the 16th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM16).
  • 07/22/2021: Welcome Minglei (Miles) Lu to join the MuthComp group.
  • 06/07/2021: our paper "A modified many-body dissipative particle dynamics model for mesoscopic fluid simulation: methodology, calibration, and application for hydrocarbon and water" was published in Molecular Simulation. (see DOI: 10.1080/08927022.2021.1876233)
  • 06/01/2021: Prof. Zhen Li received an NSF grant as PI entitled "Collaborative Research: Elements: SciMem: Enabling High Performance Multi-Scale Simulation on Big Memory Platforms".
  • 05/21/2021: Welcome Jonathan Despeaux to join the MuthComp group.
  • 04/26/2021: Prof. Zhen Li received a NASA EPSCoR grant as Science-PI entitled "Impacts of gravity and surfactants on drainage flow and rheology of wet foams".
  • 03/10/2021: our paper "Operator learning for predicting multiscale bubble growth dynamics" was published in The Journal of Chemical Physics. (see DOI: 10.1063/5.0041203)
  • 03/04/2021: Prof. Zhen Li attended 2021 SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (SIAM-CSE21) and chaired the minisymposium "MS-259 Multiscale methods and Data-driven Models". He also presented recent research progress on "Active-Learning Methods Applied to Multiscale Modeling of Viscoelastic Flows". (see SIAM-CSE21)
  • 02/03/2021: our paper "Integrating blood cell mechanics, platelet adhesive dynamics and coagulation cascade for modelling thrombus formation in normal and diabetic blood" was published in Journal of The Royal Society Interface. (see DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0834)
  • 01/06/2021: Welcome Faisal Tushar, Ali Mohammadi and Jordan Noel to join the MuthComp group.
  • 12/15/2020: our paper “Active- and transfer-learning applied to microscale-macroscale coupling to simulate viscoelastic flows” was published on Journal of Computational Physics. (see DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2020.110069)
  • 10/01/2020: Prof. Zhen Li attended the CECAM Workshop "Multiscale Simulations of Soft Matter: New Method Developments and Mathematical Foundations", and gave an invited talk on "Non-Markovian Coarse-Grained Models of Polymeric Fluids Derived via the Mori-Zwanzig Formalism". (see CECAM-DE-SMSM)
  • 09/30/2020: Prof. Zhen Li chaired the live session on Multiscale Simulations of Virtual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science (SES) 2020, and gave a recorded lecture on "Active-learning applied to multiscale modeling of viscoelastic complex fluids".
  • 09/02/2020: Prof. Zhen Li received an ARO grant as subaward PI on "Fractional PDEs for Conservation Laws and Beyond: Theory, Numerics and Applications".
  • 07/08/2020: our paper “PPINN: Parareal physics-informed neural network for time-dependent PDEs” was published on Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering. (see DOI: 10.1016/j.cma.2020.113250)
  • 05/28/2020: our paper “Controlled release of entrapped nanoparticles from thermoresponsive hydrogels with tunable network characteristics” was published on Soft Matter and was featured as the back cover article of Soft Matter. (see DOI: 10.1039/D0SM00207K)
  • 05/07/2020: our paper “A dissipative particle dynamics method for arbitrarily complex geometries” was featured as one of the Most Cited Journal of Computational Physics Articles. (see DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2017.11.014)
  • 01/29/2020: Prof. Zhen Li co-organized a symposium on the topic of "Multiscale Modeling and Mechanics of Soft Matter and Hierarchical Materials" in the Society of Engineering Science (SES) 57th Annual Technical Meeting to be held Sep. 28-30, 2020 at University of Minnesota (https://ccaps.umn.edu/SES). If you are interested in joining us, please submit your abstract to our symposium under Scientific Track 5 by April 15, 2020.
  • 12/02/2019: our paper “A GPU-accelerated package for simulation of flow in nanoporous source rocks with many-body dissipative particle dynamics” was published on Computer Physics Communications and released the Open-Source GPU-accelerated DPD simulator USERMESO-2.5. (see DOI: 10.1016/j.cpc.2019.106874)
  • 11/21/2019: Our teamwork "Nanoporous Flow Simulations on the Summit Supercomputer" in collaboration with Idaho National Lab, IBM, Brown University, University of Utah and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab won the Best Research Poster Award in SC19 (The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis). Congratulations to our great team.
  • 10/23/2019: Prof. Zhen Li attended The 91st Annual Meeting of The Society of Rheology held in Raleigh, North Carolina, and presented a recent work on “Active- and transfer-learning applied to microscale-macroscale coupling in modeling of viscoelastic flows”.
  • 10/02/2019: our paper “Implicit-solvent coarse-grained modeling for polymer solutions via Mori-Zwanzig formalism” was published on Soft Matter and was featured as the back cover article of Soft Matter. (see DOI: 10.1039/C9SM01211G)
  • 09/19/2019: our paper “Effect of Wetting and Dewetting Dynamics on Atomic Force Microscopy Measurements” was published on Langmuir. (see DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b02575)
  • 08/21/2019: our paper “Quantitative prediction of erythrocyte sickling for the development of advanced sickle cell therapies” was published on Science Advances, and was highlighted on its webpage (see Developing sickle cell drugs).
  • 08/15/2019: The MuthComp (Multiscale theory and Computation) group is established.

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