Looking back on the MOFSIM2019 workshop

The MOFSIM2019 workshop on April 10-12, 2019 in Ghent, Belgium was attended by over 110 modelers, including Ph.D. students, postdoctoral, senior researchers, as well as renowned experimentalists in the field of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and related porous materials.

This event was organized by prof. dr. Guillaume Maurin (Université de Montpellier), prof. dr. Bartolomeo Civalleri (Università degli Studi di Torino), and prof. dr. Veronique Van Speybroeck (Ghent University) and her team.

The two-day MOFSIM2019 workshop aimed to address the current state of the art, limitations, and perspectives on the computational tools applied to MOFs with a special emphasis on four main topics. During the workshop, renowned computational modelers shared their expertise in a plenary talk on each of the four topics, followed by presentations of invited speakers, opening the floor for plenary discussions open for every participant.

The workshop opened with a reception on the evening of April 10 in the former Dominician monastery ‘Het Pand’, owned by Ghent University. The workshop itself took place on April 11-12 in the Ghent University Aula in the historic city centre of Ghent.

On the first day, the topics Catalysis and adsorption in MOFs and Electronic properties and derived functions of MOFs were discussed. To this end, two renowned computational scientists shared their expertise during a plenary lecture: Laura Gagliardi (University of Minnesota) and Francesco Paesani (University of California San Diego). The day finished with a poster session, followed by a conference dinner at Restaurant Pakhuis.

On the second day, the MOFSIM2019 workshop addressed the topics Mechanical, thermal, and chemical stability of MOFs and Frontiers of MOF simulations towards longer length and time scales. These topics were introduced by François-Xavier Coudert (Chimie Paris-Tech) and Berend Smit (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne).

The invited speakers were: Dirk De Vos (KU Leuven), German Sastre (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia), Louis Vanduyfhuys (Ghent University), Thijs J.H. Vlugt (Delft University of Technology), Ben Slater (University College London), Thomas Heine (Technische Universität Dresden), Paolo Falcaro (Technische Universität Graz), Monique A. van der Veen (Delft University of Technology), Rochus Schmid (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Jin-Chong Tan (University of Oxford), Peyman Z. Moghadam (University of Sheffield), Alessandro Erba (Università degli Studi di Torino), Rocio Semino (Université de Montpellier), Özgür Yazaydin (University College London).

A visual impression of the workshop is available through the banner below.

Click here to see more photos from the MOFSIM2019 workshop.

Thank you to all participants who made it a successful event!