Roy L. Johnston Ph.D.

Johnston, Roy L.
Position Department / Business Unit
Reader in Computational Chemistry and Deputy Head of School
Institution Disciplines
University of Birmingham, UK Nanoparticles Chemistry
City State / Provence
Birmingham
Country Website
U.K. link
Fax

Since 1990, I have been actively involved in research in a number of areas of theoretical chemistry: modelling the structures growth and dynamics of elemental, molecular and nanoalloy clusters; studying metal-insulator transitions in macroscopic and microscopic systems; applying Genetic Algorithms to optimization problems in chemical physics; theoretical studies of the electronic structures of inorganic and molecular solids.

Research Interests
- Theoretical Chemistry
- Simulation of Solids, Surfaces and Clusters
- Modelling Cluster Growth and Dynamics
- Structures, Segregation and Dynamics of Nanoalloy Clusters
- Electronic Structures of Inorganic and Organic Solids
- Applications of Natural Computation (e.g. Genetic Algorithms) in Chemistry
- Theoretical Studies of Protein Folding

My research has led to the publication of over 100 primary research papers. My research group is currently composed of five PhD students and a number of undergraduate project students.

Career Highlights

2003-
Reader in Computational Chemistry at University of Birmingham
2002-2003
Senior Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry at University of Birmingham
1995-2002
Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry at University of Birmingham
1989-1995
Royal Society University Research Fellow at University of Sussex
1988-1989
NATO Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof D L Lichtenberger at University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
1987-1988
NATO Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof R Hoffmann at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
1983-1987
DPhil at University of Oxford with Thesis entitled "Theoretical Study of Polyhedral Inorganic Molecules" in the group of Prof D M P Mingos FRS
1979-83
BA First Class (Honours) in Chemistry at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University

Books

Roy L. Johnston (Editor) Applications of Evolutionary Computation in Chemistry Struct. Bond. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2004, 110 (ISBN: 3-540-40258-6).

Important Articles

Tamiki Komatsuzaki, Kyoko Hoshino, Yasuhiro Matsunaga, Gareth J. Rylance, Roy L. Johnston and David J. Wales, How Many Dimensions are Required to Approximate the Potential Energy Landscape of a Model Protein? J. Chem. Phys. 2005, 122, 084714.
Giulia Rossi, Riccardo Ferrando, Arnaldo Rapallo, Alessandro Fortunelli, Benjamin C. Curley, Lesley D. Lloyd, and Roy L. Johnston, Global Optimization of bimetallic cluster structures. II. Size-matched Ag-Pd, Ag-Au, and Pd-Pt systems J. Chem. Phys. 2005, 122, 194309.
Scott Habershon, Eugene Y. Cheung, Kenneth D. M. Harris and Roy L. Johnston, Powder Diffraction Indexing as a Pattern Recognition Problem: A New Approach for Unit Cell Determination Based on an Artificial Neural Network J. Phys. Chem. A 2004, 108, 711-716.
Lesley D. Lloyd, Roy L. Johnston, Said Salhi and Nicholas T. Wilson, Theoretical Investigation of Isomer Stability in Platinum-Palladium Nanoalloy Clusters J. Mater. Chem. 2004, 14, 1691-1704.
Graham A. Cox, Thomas V. Mortimer-Jones, Robert P. Taylor and Roy L. Johnston, Development and Optimisation of a Novel Genetic Algorithm for Studying Model Protein Folding Theor. Chem. Acc. 2004, 112, 163-178.
Roy L. Johnston, Evolving Better Nanoparticles: Genetic Algorithms for Optimising Cluster Geometries (Dalton Perspective) Dalton Transactions 2003, 4193-4207.