It is always a fabulous experience to talk with the youngsters regarding the broader aspects of my field of research. The student members of the Technology Transfer Group interviewed me regarding some of the fundamental aspects of research in computational materials engineering. Here is a part of the interview.

This is the lecture delivered by the group leader, Dr. Amlan Dutta, at the Atal Faculty Development Program organized by NIT Rourkela. Here the speaker discusses the need of obtaining random numbers for scientific computing. In addition, the method of using random numbers through the linear congruent generator has been demonstrated.

This is the second part of the lecture given above. This part covers the technique of generating random numbers with normal distribution using the Box-Muller transform. Subsequently, a brief description of generation of true random numbers is given, followed by discussion of monte carlo integration. Finally, a hands-on demo of simulating the process of diffusion as random walk is provided.