Curriculum Vitae

Personal data

Name: Jan Hermann Meinke
Address: Andreasstrasse 16, 52428 Jülich, Germany
Email: j.meinke@fz-juelich.de
Citizenship: German

Education

Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1995 - 2002

Ph.D. in Physics, May 2002 Specialty: Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics

M.S. in Physics, 1998

Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg, Germany 1992 - 1995

Vordiplom in Physics (equivalent to B.S.), 1994

Current research interests and career goals

I'm interested in the behavior and properties of complex systems. My current research combines analytic and computational methods to investigate the statistics and mechanism of protein folding and protein-protein interactions. This includes the development of improved serial and parallel algorithms and programs. The computational algorithms include advanced Monte Carlo and graph algorithms.

I wish to employ both my Physics and Computer Science skills in a well-balanced way to investigate and develop new materials and models.

I am seeking a faculty position in either Physics or Computational Science.

Experience

Research Associate, John von Neumann Institute for Computing, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany, since July 2005

Continued studies begun at Michigan Tech. Studied the aggregation of β-amyloid_16-22, an essential component of the fibril formation in Alzheimer's. Implemented a parallel version of the all-atom energy function used in SMMP, a protein simulation package. Performed parallel tempering simulation on up to 4096 processors of the IBM BlueGene/L JUBL.

Research Associate, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA, Feb 2005 - June 2005

Studied the effect of combining an all-atom energy function with a variable Go-like potential term on the folding of Protein A.

Research Associate, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA, 2003 - 2004

Investigated the pinning of flux lines in type II superconductors due to point and columnar defects in the ground state using a matching algorithm. Studied how columnar defects give rise to the transverse Meissner effect. Compared the efficiency of various implementation of the maximum flow algorithm for studying the random-field Ising model. Related the scaling behavior of the algorithm to a physical transition. Studied the distribution of charges on the surface of a sphere and compared them with analytic and experimental results.

Research Associate, MSU, May 2002 - Dec. 2002

Studied a simple mechanical model of stripe formation in type II superconductors.

Research Assistant, MSU, July 1999 - May 2002, Doctoral Research : "Exact ground states of disordered Systems" (Research Advisor: Prof. Phillip M. Duxbury).

Studied the ground state properties of the random-field Ising model and of minimum-energy fracture interfaces in polycrystallin materials using exact combinatorial algorithms and analytic methods.

Teaching

Received extensive classroom training during military service. This included creating of syllabi and lesson plans, motivation, and didactics in adult education.

Teaching Assistant: Computational Physics, 2000

Lectures on "Introduction to Java in Computational Physics", help room support

Graduate Assistant: Abrams Planetarium, MSU, 1997 - 1999

Introductory astronomy lessons for preschoolers to senior citizens, show development, curriculum development

Teaching Assistant: Introductory labs for physics and astronomy 1996 - 1997

Experiments in mechanics and optics
Introduction to concepts and methods in astronomy using computer experiments

Computer

High-performance computing is an important part of my research. I extended the protein simulation package SMMP to support multi-protein simuation and parallelized the energy function using MPI. I further wrote Python bindings for the package, which are particularly useful for teaching and shorter research projects. During my research at MSU I developed an object-oriented framework to facilitate the application of graph algorithms to physical systems. Further skills include:

Proficient in several programming languages including Java, C++, C, Fortran, and Python for both serial and parallel applications.
Skilled in writing documents using HTML, LaTeX, and various word processors.
Proficient with Mathematica and other scientific software packages.
Good knowledge of operating system and system administration.(Linux, Solaris, Windows 2000,XP). Maintained several multi-user Linux systems as primary system administrator since 1998.

Languages

German, English, Japanese, French

Scholarships and Awards

1995/96 Fulbright Grant

Professional activities

1998-2000 Graduate student representative on the departmental computer operations committee (COC)

1996-1998 Graduate student representative on the departmental chairs advisory committee (AdCom)

Professional Memberships

American Physical Society, Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft

Presentations

Simulating Alzheimer's on the XD1, Cray User Group Meeting, 2006
Depinning of a Bose glass by point disorder, APS March Meeting, 2004
Matching Flux Lines on Columnar Defects, New Optimization Algorithms in Physics, Dagstuhl, 2003
Drehen, Brechen und andere Arten der Entspannung, TU Ilmenau, 2002
Scaling laws for interfaces in polycrystalline materials, APS March meeting, 2002
Scaling laws for interfaces in polycrystalline materials, Statistical Physics of Glassy and Non-Equilibrium Systems (SPHINX) workshop, 2002.
Non-universality in the random-field Ising model, APS March meeting 2001
Domain Structures and First Order Behavior in the Random-Field Ising Model, APS March meeting 2000
First Order Behavior in the Random-Field Ising Model, Center for Fundamental Materials Research (CFMR) Symposium 2000, MSU
Introduction to Knot Theory, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, MSU December 1999
Algorithms for Disordered Magnets and Flux Lines, 1999 SIAM Annual meeting, invited talk

Publications

Jan H. Meinke and Ulrich H.E. Hansmann, Protein Simulations combining an All-Atom Force Field with a Go-Term, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter (Bedlewo Special Edition) in press (2007)
Jan H. Meinke and Ulrich H.E. Hansmann, Aggregation of β-amyloid fragments, J. Chem. Phys. 126, 014706 (2006)
J. Meinke, S. Mohanty, O. Zimmermann and U.H.E. Hansmann (Eds), From Computational Biophysics to System Biology 2006, NIC Series Vol. 34, Jülich (2006)
Peter Lipowsky, Mark J. Bowick, Jan H. Meinke, David R. Nelson and Andreas R. Bausch, Direct visualization of dislocation dynamics in grain-boundary scars, Nature Materials 4, 407-411 (2005) (cond-mat/0506366)
Jan H. Meinke and A. Alan Middleton, Linking physics and algorithms in the random-field Ising model (2005) (cond-mat/0502471)
D. Clay Hambrick, Jan H. Meinke and A. Alan Middleton, Exploring optimization for the random-field Ising model (2005) (cond-mat/0501269)
E. A. Holm, J. H. Meinke, E. S. McGarrity, P. M. Duxbury Critical manifolds in polycrystalline grain structures, Materials science forum 467-470: 1039-1044 Part 1-2 (2004)
J. H. Meinke, E. S. McGarrity, P. M. Duxbury and E. A. Holm, Scaling laws for critical manifolds in polycrystalline materials, PRE 68, 066107 (2003)
R. Dobrin, J. H. Meinke and P. M. Duxbury, Random-field Ising model on complete graphs and trees, J. Phys. A 35(19) (2002) L247-L254 (cond-mat/0203194)
P. M. Duxbury and J. H. Meinke, Ground state nonuniversality in the random-field Ising mode, PRE 64, 036112 (2001) (cond-mat/0012042)