Christian Rutgersson defended his Master Thesis on 9 June 2023. Congrats!

Christian Rutgersson defended his Master thesis in Complex Adaptive Systems at Chalmers University of Technology on 9 June 2023 at 17:00. Congrats!

Title: Characterizing Active Matter Particle Systems with Graph Neural Networks

Abstract:
Biological systems often have self-organizing properties. On the microscopic scale, the self-organization may be driven by constituents that generate their own motility by expending energy. Systems made up of such constituents, that self-propel, are termed active matter. Via this definition, it is clear that it is of importance to understand the rules that govern the microscopic constituents of an active matter in order to understand the active matter itself. Even though active matter is a topic of interest today, finding good methods of qualitatively and quantitatively characterizing the constituents of active matter remains an issue. Coincidentally, different types of artificial neural networks (ANN) have, in recent years, been used increasingly in research settings with great success. One such network is called the graph neural network (GNN). As the name suggests, this network is specifically designed to work with graphs as input data. Graphs can act as a useful representation of a system of particles, including active matter systems. Therefore, this project aims to characterize the forces that underpin an active matter system consisting of interacting particles that also have an active component, using a special type of GNN called message passing network (MPN). This was done by simulating the active matter using a Python code written from scratch, and training the MPN with standard machine learning algorithms. In the end, the simulations were found to give rise to characteristic active matter phenomena, and the MPN was able to correctly predict the force dynamics of a particle in the given active matter system.

Supervisors: Miguel Ruiz Garcia, Carlo Manzo, Jesus Pineda Castro, Giovanni Volpe
Examiner: Giovanni Volpe
Opponent: Ludvig Lindahl

Place: Nexus
Time: 9 June, 2023, 12:00

Christian Rutgersson joins the Soft Matter Lab

(Photo by A. Argun.)
Alfred Bergsten joined the Soft Matter Lab on 17 January 2023.

Christian is a master student in Complex Adaptive Systems at Chalmers University of Technology.

During his time at the Soft Matter Lab, he will study the characterization of active matter particle systems with graph neural networks.