Combining Chemistry/Physics/Engineering Research

[blade86]

Hello, I have a Monbusho scholarship(Japan) Bachelors in robotics(thesis: Molecular Dynamics for biofuels), have done an Erasmus Mundus fellowship dbl masters in Quantum Chemistry/Phys (thesis: DFT for solar cells) and am just pursuing a Marie curie fellowship in Theoretical Physics (thesis: ab-initio/MD for paramagnetic NMR). I don't know how experienced the people are here in terms of career advice, but was wondering what are the possible options to have some sort of interdisciplinary research that can combine all my experience together to make some sort of coherent goal.
For example, one thing I am interested in(other than solar cells) is NMR as applied to MRI for neuroimaging. Is it possible to get a postgrad grant where I can propose to begin with a theoretical/computational approach, and then move on to implement this approach for fMRI, where the computational tools they use are not that advanced to begin with in any case, since I have seen that most of the ppl in the field of neuroimaging have a more pyschology/medical background and may not always be equipped to apply proper theoretical techniques. I am not sure that we are allowed such a wide research goal. Any advice/ tips or direction to free research institutes would be appreciated! Thanks

 

[lisab]

Have you considered exploring the field of Medical Physics? They do quite a lot in imaging.

 

[Aero51]

Try combustion

 

[blade86]

@lisab thanks for the suggestion.. i meant if someone knows of some particular grants that may provide me the opportunity for independent research for example the ITAMP postdoc at harvard.
@Aero51 you make no sense

 

[Aero51]

What I meant to say is that combustion is essentially a combination of chemistry, physics and engineering. It has nothing to do with medicine/neuroscience but it is relevant to your core interests.

 

[blade86]

Yeah I understand what you mean. However combustion is mostly dealing with fluid dynamics on the engineering side and chemical kinetic modelling of ignition processes in chem/physics, there is relatively little work done on the molecular scale. In fact, for my bachelor thesis I ran an MD simulation of fuel oxidation starting from scratch in FORTRAN77 but I doubt one can utilize ab-initio for such processes as there are many reactions going on during combustion, and it is not feasible computationally or to provide extremely valuable data that can't be approximated elsewhere. Besides I think its a fascinating subject, but not too keen to do research on combustion processes. But thanks for your input.