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Member, Institute of Theoretical
Science
Member, Materials Science
Institute
M.S., University of Genoa, Italy, 1985 (Angelo Perico). Ph.D., University of Genoa, Italy, 1989 (Carla Cuniberti). Researcher of the National Council of Research (Italian National Laboratory) in the Institute for the Study of Synthetic and Natural Macromolecules, December 1989–99; Visiting Scientist at University of Chicago, James Franck Institute, 1994 (Karl F. Freed); Visiting Scientist at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995–97 (Kenneth S. Schweizer); Italian Ministry of Public Instruction Doctoral Fellow 1985–87; Honors and Awards: Italian Ministry of Public Instruction fellow, 1985-87. At Oregon since 1998.
The Guenza group works on the theory and simulations of structure and dynamics of complex fluids. The research goal is the development of novel theoretical (statistical mechanics) approaches to describe structure and dynamics of complex (macromolecular) systems, while including the underlying molecular details. The studies combine simulation and analytical theory in an effort to overcome some long-standing problems in this exciting field of research.
With recent technological innovations in biology, materials science, and information science, there is a foreseeable need and potential to organize, understand and formalize the huge amounts of available information in terms of well-defined theoretical approaches. Our contribution in this area is the development of theoretical frameworks that elucidate physical and biological processes in complex systems on the basis of their underlying molecular structure. Such theoretical tools will allow one to predict system properties from its known chemical structure and physical parameters (e.g., temperature, density), and will provide useful information for the tailored synthesis of new synthetic and/or biological materials characterized by desirable macroscopic properties.
An ultimate goal of our work is to derive a “unified” theoretical framework to provide a common theoretical “language” to describe structure and dynamics of complex macromolecular systems across the fields of biophysics, materials science, and complex fluids. With this goal in mind, we recently derived a Generalized Langevin Equation for the cooperative dynamics of interacting macromolecules in a liquid. This equation describes how the motion of macromolecular systems is modified by the interplay between intra- and inter-molecular forces. When time-dependent intermolecular forces are comparable to intramolecular contributions, unique dynamical processes take place, which are characterized by cooperative motions involving many molecules. Cooperative dynamics pertain to a series of quite different systems of bio-physical and material interest including: self-assembly of macromolecular systems, nanoparticles, undercooled polymer fluids, polymer liquids and mixtures at room temperature, interacting biological systems such as protein-protein and protein-DNA aggregates, droplets forming at interfaces, and more.
Another area of active interest is to develop new theoretical tools to optimize the efficiency in simulations of complex fluids. Computer simulations are extremely useful research tools since they provide the necessary information to build the understanding of the microscopic physical processes underlying the macroscopic behavior of interest. Unfortunately, several practical barriers impair the ability of performing simulations of complex fluids because they involve coupled long- and short-range interactions, as well as a hierarchy of time- and length-scales at which relevant processes take place. For these systems, an atomistic simulation is often impossible to conduct because it would require far too many supercomputers and far too many years to complete due to the limitations in speed and computer hardware. A way to overcome this problem is to develop multiscale modeling procedures. Our recent work has provided an efficient analytical procedure to coarse-grain structure and dynamics of macromolecular liquids and their mixtures. This “renormalization” approach is a useful starting point in developing novel procedures of multiscale modeling of complex macromolecular fluids, since it allows one to coarse-grain the systems without losing the essential microscopic features responsible for their rich and interesting behavior.
Visualizing the coarse graining procedure in which we renormalize a liquid of polymer chains (which includes monomer structure) into a system of interacting soft colloidal particles.
Selected Publications:
36) M. Guenza "Theoretical models for bridging timescales in polymer dynamics" J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 20, 033101-0331024 (2008).
35) E. J. Sambriski and M. G. Guenza "Theoretical coarse-graining
approach to bridge
length scales in diblock copolymer liquids" Phys. Rev. E 76, 051801-051813
(2007).
Note: This paper has been selected for the November 12, 2007 issue of Virtual
Journal
of Nanoscale Science & Technology and for the November 15,
2007 issue of Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research.
34) E. Caballero-Manrique, J. K. Bray, W. A. Deutschman, F. W. Dahlquist and M. G. Guenza “A theory of protein dynamics to predict NMR relaxation” Biophysical Journal 93 (12) 4128-4140 (2007).
33) E. J. Sambriski, G. Yatsenko, M. A. Nemirovskaya, M. Guenza "Bridging length scales in polymer melt relaxation for macromolecules with specific local structures" J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 19, 205115-205126 (2007).
32) M. C. Fink, K. V. Adair, M. G. Guenza, A. H. Marcus "Translational Diffusion of Fluorescent Proteins by Molecular Fourier Imaging Correlation Spectroscopy", Biophys. J. 91, 3482 (2006).
31) E. J. Sambriski, G. Yatsenko, M. A. Nemirovskaya, M. Guenza "Analytical coarse-grained description for polymer melts" J. Chem. Phys. 125, 234902 (2006). Note: This paper has been selected for the December 15, 2006 issue of Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research.
29) pdf format: G. Yatsenko, E.J. Sambriski, M.A. Nemirovskaya, M. Guenza "Analytical Soft-Core Potentials for Macromolecular Fluids and Mixtures" Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 257803 (2004) Note: this paper has been selected for the December 17, 2004 issue of Virtual Journal of Nanoscience & Technology and for the December 15, 2004 issue of Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research.
25) pdf format: M. Guenza, "Cooperative Dynamics in Unentanged Polymer Fluids," Physical Review Letters, 88, 025901-1, (2002).
23) M. Guenza, "Many-Chain Correlated Dynamics in Polymer Fluids," Journal of Chemical Physics, 110, 7574 (1999).
To Contact Dr. Guenza:
Phone: 541-346-2877
mguenza@uoregon.edu
WEBMASTER
lynde@uoregon.edu
