Finite materials systems of reduced sizes exhibit specific forms of aggregation, phases, structures and morphologies, quantized electronic shell structures, dimensionality cross-over, and size-dependent evolutionary patterns, which are manifested in unique, non-scalable, size-dependent physical and chemical properties. Indeed, when the dimensions of materials structures are reduced to the nanoscale, emergent phenomena often occurs, that are not commonly expected, or deducible, from knowledge gained at larger sizes. Computer-based quantum computations, simulations and emulations, are tools of discovery which enable uncovering emergent behavior in the nanoscale. In this talk we employ simulations, often in conjunction with laboratory experiments, to explore the origins of the unique behavior of size-selected materials  systems in the nanoscale. We  illustrate such computational microscopy investigations  in diverse areas, ranging from formation and quantized transport in nanowires, stability and stochastic hydrodynamics of nanoscale jets and liquid junctions, and machine-like response emerging in self-assembled superlattices comprised of atomically-precise nanoclusters, to spontaneous symmetry breaking  manifested in formation of highly-correlated Wigner molecules in electron quantum dots, quantum space-time crystals, and exact numerical simulations of many-body microscopic Hamiltonians, leading to the employment of finite ultracold atom systems in fundamental explorations of quantum magnetism, entanglement, matter-wave interferometry, and quantum-optics phenomena emulated with interacting ultracold atoms.

Uzi Landman was born and raised in Israel where he received his education. He obtained a BSc degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a M.Sc. from the Weizmann Institute of Science and a D.Sc. from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Since 1970 he worked at UC Santa Barbara, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Xerox research laboratories at Webster NY, and the University of Rochester NY. In 1977 he joined the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he is currently a Regents’ and Institute Professor, holding the Callaway endowed Chair and serving as the director of the Georgia Tech Center for Computational Materials Science. Landman’s varied areas of scientific endeavor include theoretical condensed matter physics, ultracold atoms and matter-wave interferometry, clusters, quantum dots, nanocatalysis, microscopic hydrodynamics and nanotribology, with an emphasis on the development and use of computational methodologies. Landman published close to 500 articles in these areas (h-index = 103). He served as Associate Dean for Research of the College of Science at Georgia Tech and founded the Journal of Computational Materials Science. Landman is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the British Institute of Physics (IOP). He received a number of awards, including: the Georgia Tech 1992 Distinguished Professor award, the 1999 American Physical Society (APS) Jesse Beams outstanding research award, the 2000 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (theory), the 2002 American Materials Research Society (MRS) Medal, the 2005 APS (Rahman) Computational Physics Prize, and a Humboldt Award in 2008.  He has been nominated to the US National Academy of Science.