These are my academic interests: chemical engineering thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, information theory, particulate systems, generic populations. These topics may look disconnected by they are not; they share in common a probabilistic view that gives rise to a common mathematical language, the language of thermodynamics. Like any mathematical language, thermodynamics describes vastly different processes, from interacting molecules to transmitted bits of information, and financial mergers. The physical world is unpredictable but its unpredictability obeys rules. Thermodynamics tells us how microscopic chaos becomes macroscopic order.
Welcome to the Random Universe.
- Undergraduate & Graduate Thermodynamics: This section is based on classes that I have taught and on my undergraduate textbook on chemical engineering thermodynamics.
- Generalized Thermodynamics: This section is a series of papers that extend thermodynamics beyond molecules, to random variables and stochastic processes in general. Now available as a book published by Springer-Nature. This is an on-going effort that explores the connection between thermodynamics and stochastic processes inside and outside physics.
- Population Balances: This unit is based on my research on probabilistic population balances, the theory of multicomponent aggregation, and the development of the constant-number Monte Carlo method (cNMC) for the simulation of coagulation (aggregation) and breakup (fragmentation).
- Particle Science: A collection of experimental and theoretical papers on particle synthesis and growth, filed under two general sub-categories, one that focuses on colloidal systems (monodisperse nanoparticles and their clusters) and the other on plasma colloids, namely, nanoparticle assemblages formed or processed in low pressure plasmas.
Contact Information
Themis Matsoukas
313 CBEB
Department of Chemical Engineering
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
+1 814 863 2002
txm11 at psu dot edu
Short Bio Themis Matsoukas received his BS in chemical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (ΕΜΠ) and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, also in chemical engineering. After a postodoctoral appointment at UCLA and a brief stint in the Greek army he joined Penn State, where he has been since. He has taught the undergraduate and graduate courses in thermodynamics, material balances, the undergraduate lab, and electives in aerosols and population balances. He has published two books and is working on a third one, all on different aspects of thermodynamics. He is an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports and Entropy. In his free time he plays the piano and hikes the woods.
