People
Thilanga Liyana-Arachchi
Thilanga is a Postdoctoral scholar in the Professor Coray M. Colina group in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Louisiana State University in spring 2008. In spring 2009, he enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University and joined Prof. Francisco R. Hung's research group. During his Ph.D. studies, he carried out Molecular Dynamics and quantum mechanics simulations to investigate interfacial phenomena at air/ice, air/water and air/salt water interfaces. After receiving his Ph.D. in May 2013, he joined Prof. J. Ilja Siepmann's research group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, where he carried out Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamic simulations to investigate algorithm and force field development for coarse grain and soft particle models for predicting phase equilibria.
In Colina's group at the Pennsylvania State University, Thilanga is investigating novel microporous materials for applications in environment friendly and energy efficient reverse osmosis treatments using theoretical and computational tools. This consists of in silico synthesis and characterization of polymeric structures, investigation of their chemistry at the molecular level to help interpret experimental data and development of design principles to create environmentally friendly and energy efficient reverse osmosis membranes for specific industrial applications.
