Mike Payne has just retired from the position of Professor of Computational Physics in the University of Cambridge.
He has worked on first principles total energy calculations since 1985 and has published more than 300 papers which have been cited over 55,000 times.
His CASTEP software is sold by Biovia and has cumulative sales of $55million.
He was awarded the 1996 Maxwell Medal and Prize and gave the 1998 Mott Lecture. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008 and was awarded the 2014 Swan Prize.
Molecular Modelling 2.0
The ability to perform predictive quantum mechanical calculations using Density Functional Theory (DFT) [1] has transformed our understanding of materials at the atomic scale. The availability of many easy-to-use computer codes that implement DFT, such as CASTEP [2], has allowed widespread application of the method across numerous scientific disciplines and applications both in academia and industry. The success of methodology is such that the output of scientific publications which include the results of DFT calculations is now measured in kilo-papers per year! [3]
In this talk, I will present a personal view of how I believe the field of Molecular Modelling needs to evolve if it is to provide even greater real-world benefit in the future. Given the significant amounts of public funding that have been allocated to this research field in numerous countries, I am concerned that the academic research community will have to generate - and demonstrate - a significantly higher level of return on this investment than is currently achieved, in order to justify the same degree of support in the future.
