Talk
Patten Seminar: Tibor Szilvási
When
· 2:45 PM MDT
Shown in the venue’s time zone (America/Denver), not yours.
Where
Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotec Building, A108
Boulder, CO
Tickets
No on-sale date recorded
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What the source said
Speaker: Associate Professor Tibor Szilvási, Chemical and Biological Engineering, The University of Alabama Seminar: Modeling Supported Nanoparticles for Catalysis Host: Will Medlin Abstract Small, supported nanoparticles (NPs) with 1-5 nm diameter play an important role in catalysis and tuning metal nanoparticle-support interactions is a fundamental method to control catalytic reactions. Experimental techniques provide limited insights into how interactions with the support change the structure of nanoparticles whereas density functional theory calculations suffer from system size constraints and rely on idealized constructions. I will show in this presentation that the simulation of supported nanoparticles is possible in quantitative agreement with benchmark microcalorimetric measurements for adhesion, chemical potential, and heat of adsorption. Analysis of coordination number, strain, and crystallinity in optimized Ag nanoparticles supported on graphene/Ni(111) and MgO(100) revealed surface features inconsistent with previously assumed idealized models. Our results demonstrated that the widely used Wulff construction is not satisfactory structural models of supported Ag nanoparticles. The approach developed here based on machine learning interatomic potentials opens up an avenue to achieve modeler’s dreams of simulating industrially relevant supported nanoparticles directly under catalytic conditions. Biosketch Prof. Tibor Szilvási studied chemical engineering, chemistry, and physics at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary, where he completed his PhD degree in 2016. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with Prof. Manos Mavrikakis he joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of Alabama (UA) as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2020 and got promoted to Associate Professor in 2026. Prof. Szilvási’s research group focuses on computational catalysis and materials design. Prof. Szilvási has published over 140 peer-reviewed publications. His research group is funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Education, Department of Defense, the Krell Institute, and NVIDIA. He obtained NSF CAREER Award and UA President’s Faculty Research Award for his research accomplishments and the UA-AIChE Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the undergraduate students of his Department for teaching excellence. Most recently, Tibor was announced as the 2026 recipient of the Early Career in Catalysis Award of the Catalysis Science & Technology division of the American Chemical Society.