Huji Banner

Baruch Barzel

The Racah Institute of Physics
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem 91904, Israel

		Telephone: (Office)	(972-2) 658-6332
		Fax:	(972-2) 652-0089
		Email:	baruch@phys.huji.ac.il
		Address:	Danciger B building, Room 206

Brief Biography | Research Interests | Publications | For Students

Teaching

This year I am a teaching assistant in the course Mechanics and Special Relativity for Physicists, and Electricity and Magnetism for Physicists.
Last year I taught Waves and Optics for physicists (course registry, Amir's notes, exercises.)

Presentations and Posters (All presentations include animations, so it is recommended to download them and view them with powerpoint XP)

This presentation was given at my final MSc lecture, explaining in general the subject of my MSc thesis.
The presentation is in English and in Microsoft Powerpoint (XP) format.

This presentation was given at Yeshivat Hkibbutz Hadaty in Eyn Tzurim.
It is a lecture addressed to non-scientists about the Special Theory of Relativity.
The lecture was given to mark the centennial of Einstein's revolution.
The presentation is in Hebrew and in Microsoft Powerpoint (XP) format.

This presentation was given at the annual IPS conference in December 2005 held at Ort-Braude, Karmiel.
Efficient Simulations of Gas-Grain Chemistry Using Moment Equations.
The presentation is in English and in Microsoft Powerpoint (XP) format.

7 specie graph Efficient Simulations of Gas-Grain Chemistry. This poster (pdf) was presented at the faculty day in the
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (18/5/2006). It concludes the work done regarding the moment equations and the
multiplane method.

Efficient Simulations of Genetic Networks in Cells. This poster (pdf) was presented at the

ESF-EMBO Symposium - Bacterial Networks - Joining the Strengths of Structural- and Systems Biology to reach 'Synthetic' Biology.

It concludes the simulation methodologies and their applications to the biological realm.

Research Interests

Computational Modeling of Complex Systems:

Molecular production in the Interstellar Medium has bean researched in the past few decades, and shown to be of great importance in understanding the fundamentals of the Universe's complexity. Different computational methods have been developed in an attempt to simulate these processes. These methods had many drawbacks - they were either inaccurate in certain significant cases, or inefficient when dealing with complex and elaborate reaction chains. In our research, we have found an extremely efficient and accurate method based on Moment equations suitable for simulating the Interstellar chemistry. This new method opens new and unlimited possibilities in simulating even the most complex systems of interest. We also believe this method to be applicable in other realms of related mathematical structure.

Fundamental Network Physics:

The research of reaction networks has lead us to a broader understanding of networks in general. These networks may appear in interstellar grain surfaces, where atomic and molecular species reside and react with each other, but might be generalized to various physical systems. In biology, for instance they represent genetic and metabolic chains taking place in living cells. Food chains may be modeled as interaction networks in the context of ecology. Neural structures and even sociological systems are actually represented by a network graph. The correlation between different species in a network is an important feature of that network – if, for instance the correlations are typically large than the network is highly connected. In modeling, this is important, because most computational models are based on the ability to simulate independent modules of an elaborate and complex network. The validity of such a method is mainly determined by the modularity of a network, or by how high the connectivity is. In a broader perspective, the macroscopic behavior of a certain network is also related to the connectivity parameter. Consider, for example, the stability of a network system. If the network is highly correlated, meaning that its connectivity is large, it would be very unstable, since a random fluctuation in one species will cause a macroscopic chain effect. To that edge we are currently developing a methodology to determine the network's connectivity and correlation parameters.