Prize Recipient

Gary S. Grest
Sandia National Laboratories

Citation:

"For his ground-breaking development of computational methods and their application to the study of soft materials, including polymers, colloids, and granular systems."

Background:

Gary Grest received his B.Sc. in 1971 and his Ph.D. in 1974 in physics from Louisiana State University. Following postdoctoral positions at Rutgers University and the University of Chicago he joined the faculty of physics at Purdue University in 1979. In 1981 Grest was invited to join Exxons Corporate Research Laboratories. Since 1998 Grest has been a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories.

His research in condensed matter physics includes the studies of structure and dynamics of polymers and complex fluids, granular materials, emulsions and colloids. A hallmark of his work has been identifying the time and length scales which are most significant in the physical systems and matching them to those accessible by numerical simulation.

Grest is a recipient of the Weizmann, Sloan Foundation, and Senior Humboldt fellowships. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the American Chemical Society.

He served as a member of the executive committee of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics, and on the advisory board of the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics, UCSB. In 2002, following 6 years as a division associate editor of PRL, Grest became the Editor of Physical Review E.

Selection Committee:

Beverly Berger (Chair), D. Ceperley, D. Frenkel, G. Ceder, A. Selloni