@danielsussman.bsky.social
Soft matter physics; numerical simulations; all the rest https://www.dmsussman.org/
Thanks for the kind words!
12.10.2025 21:30 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0The course assignments use GitHub with autograded tests. I'll make them all public at the end of the semester, but if you're interested I'm happy to share those, too -- just reach out!
07.10.2025 20:42 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0We're in the middle of a module on randomness as a computational resource (hence the Caravaggio painting on the website at the moment). We'll go from simple PRNGs to Metropolis Monte Carlo to using HMC for Bayesian inference. I'll be adding those notes to the webpage as they're completed.
07.10.2025 20:42 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Part of the velocity verlet shadow Hamiltonian. Sounds like the original Hamiltonian's evil doppleganger
www.dmsussman.org/assets/teach... dives into ODEs, starting with the humble Euler's method. The module's focus is on building a modular N-body framework, and progresses from RK methods to the physics of symplectic integrators and shadow Hamiltonians, and ends with an intro to molecular dynamics.
07.10.2025 20:42 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A visual representation of the state of a repo over time
Running in parallel with the language intro, www.dmsussman.org/assets/teach... discusses the craft of computational science: version control with Git, sane project architecture, and designing reproducible experiments (skills I wish we taught more explicitly to grad students everywhere!)
07.10.2025 20:42 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A screenshot from the Julia REPL, showing the calculation of pi via EDMD
www.dmsussman.org/assets/teach... is a hands-on intro to Julia, using the problem of calculating pi in increasingly unusual ways as a running theme. It culminates in a method from a physics paper that is one of the few calculations to ever make me laugh out loud.
07.10.2025 20:42 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0I made the somewhat idiosyncratic choice of teaching the course in #JuliaLang -- "idiosyncratic" as it was a language that I didn't know myself at the start of the year. My rationale for this (and course design choices) is in the preface.
Crazy, or crazy like a fox?
www.dmsussman.org/assets/teach...
I'm having a blast teaching a new 400-level computational physics class this semester. I've been writing up and posting my lecture notes as I go, and wanted to share them -- feedback and comments are more than welcome!
www.dmsussman.org/teaching/phy...
It was the first class of a new semester for me, and -- needing an example -- I asked a student what their favorite function was. They looked surprised, and said, "nobody's ever asked me that before!"
I know it's a personal question, but...when did we stop asking the questions that truly matter?
A flyer with some soft-matter-ish images, and the same link as in the main post
I'm excited that, after a long pandemic hiatus, the Atlanta area "Soft Matter Days" are back up and running! Thanks to Itamar Kolvin and Vida Jamali for kicking things off by hosting at Georgia Tech last year, and this year it's Emory's turn!
physics.emory.edu/news/soft-ma...
Interested in geometry and growth? Want to visit India? Please apply for this exciting advanced school at ICTS, Bangalore and share with others!
16.04.2025 12:53 — 👍 9 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
During the pandemic I taught a course (www.dmsussman.org/teaching/phy...) loosely based on Bloomfield's textbook. If I did it again I think I would try to make it a bit less traditional, but it was an easy place to start.
12.04.2025 16:15 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0A long derivation with a beautiful payoff! Also --- non-standard notation for the polylog, or just a notation I'm not used to?
11.04.2025 14:50 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Tomi Obadiya standing in front of his title slide after a successful Ph.D. defense
Two Ph.D. defenses from the lab in one week! Very proud of (Dr!) Tomi Obadiya!
02.04.2025 20:12 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0📢Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics
@naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor!
How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork? Let’s dive in! #Multicellularity nature.com/articles/s41...?
A post-PhD bottle of champagne
Very proud of how Dr. Packard handled the defense!
31.03.2025 21:19 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
An announcement for a Ph.D. defense
Also extremely proud as the second grad student to join my group gets ready for his Ph.D. defense!
...someone should remind me in the future not to let students schedule thesis defenses within two days of each other!
An image of a thesis defense announcement. The thesis title is missing a letter, to mildly humorous effect
Extremely proud as the very first grad student to join my group gets ready for his Ph.D. defense!
Also, I can't help but notice that he seems to have tried to make his thesis title even cooler than it already was.
