Dirac Conversations: Michele Parrinello

ICTP is a hub for international science, attracting thousands of scientists each year, including some of the most prestigious physicists and mathematicians in the world. Hundreds of Nobel laureates, Fields medallists, and ICTP Dirac medallists have visited ICTP over the years, sharing their insights and perspectives with ICTP's international science community. ICTP is capturing some of these insights in its video series of "ICTP Conversations" and "Dirac Conversations". All were conducted by ICTP Director Atish Dabholkar, sometimes accompanied by members of the Centre's faculty.

In the latest Conversation video, Director Dabholkar and Sandro Scandolo, Senior Coordinator of the ICTP Research Division and member of the Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics (CMSP) section, have a conversation with Michele Parrinello, professor at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa. He was awarded the Dirac Medal in 2009 alongside Roberto Car for their joint contributions in “developing the ab initio simulation method in which they combined, elegantly and imaginatively, the quantum mechanical density functional method for the calculation of the electronic properties of matter with molecular dynamics methods for the Newtonian simulation of atomic motions”.

Parrinello was interviewed in January 2023 while he was visiting ICTP to give an ICTP-SISSA colloquium on “The Physics of Catalysis”.

In this conversation, he discusses the origins of the Car-Parrinello method and the evolution of atomistic computational simulations, with a view on the role that ICTP can play to ensure that new computational technologies are made available globally.