Student researcher position available.

I am looking for an undergraduate student to work next year as a research assistant on a project in which we calculate electron states in unusual materials. These will tend to be materials that have interesting quantum physics characteristics and possible potential for future device applications. Examples include topological insulators. The calculations are doing using a LINUX based program called FPLO (full potential, local orbitals), which you can check out online, so some expertise with LINUX type computing would be ideal. The program is all up and working, but it is not easy (for me) to run. (The undergrad setting it up now seems to do just fine, however.) I hope/expect to have funding to pay for about 160 hours or maybe more, i.e., about 20 weeks at 8 hours per week. This would likely involve a close collaboration with Arthur Ramirez, a physicist from Bell Labs who is now Dean of Engineering at UCSC, who is interested in these materials and does experiments on them. If interested, please email me at zacksc@gmail.com