Fri, 06 Mar 2026
13:15
L6

Geometric and topological potentials driving self-assembly

Ivan Spirandelli
(University of Potsdam)
Abstract
The assembly of molecular building blocks into functional complexes is a central theme in biology and materials science. In this talk, we showcase the generative and thermodynamically predictive capabilities of a geometric model, the morphometric approach to solvation free energy, applied to spherical particles, tubes, and protein subunits. We demonstrate that this purely geometric description is sufficient to generate biologically relevant structural motifs and identify native nucleation states in simulation.
 
However, relying solely on local geometric fit often leads to optimization challenges. Molecular simulations frequently become trapped in local minima because the model lacks global structural information. To address this, we introduce a global bias based on persistent homology. By incorporating a weighted sum of total persistence as an active potential, we obtain an efficient simulation strategy, significantly increasing success rates. Integrating topological descriptions into energy functions offers a general strategy for overcoming kinetic barriers in molecular simulations, with potential applications in drug design, material development, and the study of complex self-assembly processes.

Oxford University Club Cricket Club (OUCCC) is a friendly and inclusive cricket club for Oxford University staff, graduate students, and alumni, and we’d love to welcome new players this season. We play relaxed 40-over fixtures almost every Sunday from April to September, take a break in July for our popular mini T20 World Cup, and run weekly outdoor nets from February onwards (weather permitting). Players of all abilities are very welcome.

Calving laws and where to find them
Benn, D Wheel, I Åström, J Christoffersen, P Cook, S Luckman, A Nick, F Hulton, N Hewitt, I Bassis, J Journal of Glaciology (01 Jan 2026)
Wed, 04 Mar 2026
12:45
TCC VC

Krylov complexity and the universal operator growth hypothesis

Om Gupta
Abstract

A central goal in the study of quantum chaos is being able to make universal statements about the dynamics of generic Hamiltonian systems. Under time evolution, an initially local operator progressively explores the Hilbert space of a system becoming increasingly non-local in the process. We will see that this idea lends itself to a natural notion of operator complexity measured (in the Hilbert space of operators) by the overlap of a time-evolving operator with a basis naturally adapted to time evolution and stratified by the growth in the operator's support. The information contained in this so-called Krylov basis is encoded in a sequence called the Lanczos coefficients which quantify the rate at which an operator is "pushed" along the Krylov basis to successively more complex elements. The universal operator growth hypothesis is then the conjecture that the Lanczos coefficients grow asymptotically linearly in any quantum chaotic system. In this talk, I will present an overview of these ideas and see how they manifest in the example of the well-studied SYK model. This talk is primarily based on 1812.08657.

Accelerating Inference for Multilayer Neural Networks with Quantum Computers
Rattew, A Huang, P Guo, N Pira, L Rebentrost, P The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations
Visual description of the concept
Quantum computers achieve a remarkable exponential speedup in integer factorisation (potentially making widely deployed cryptographic schemes vulnerable). Beyond that large-scale applications remain comparatively scarce, and if a fully error-corrected quantum computer were available it is not clear what 'killer app' it would be used for.
Mon, 15 Jun 2026

15:30 - 16:30
L3

TBA

Emilio Ferrucci
(SISSA)
Abstract

TBA

Mon, 27 Apr 2026

15:30 - 16:30
L3

TBA

Prof. Zhen-Qing Chen
(University of Washington)
Abstract

TBA

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