Boulder School 2015: Soft Matter In and Out of Equilibrium

July 6-31, 2015

Scientific Coordinators

Mark Bowick (Syracuse University)
William Irvine (University of Chicago)
M. Cristina Marchetti (Syracuse University)
Leo Radzihovsky (CU Boulder) 
Vincenzo Vitelli (Leiden University)

The goal of the Boulder-2015 school is to discuss basic concepts and theoretical methods useful to understand the physics of soft materials. Special emphasis will be attached to geometrical and topological properties, nonlinear effects, disorder, and dynamics out of equilibrium. These broad themes will be explored using examples drawn from modern research in liquid crystals, membranes and filaments, glasses and randomly pinned systems, turbulent biological flows, topological soft matter, and active materials to name but a few.

Through pedagogical lectures students will be exposed to key ideas of elasticity, differential geometry, topological defects, hydrodynamics, quenched disorder, and non-equilibrium methods. They will learn about the rich phenomenology of soft matter systems that vividly exhibit these themes. More rigorous mathematical methods will be supplemented by powerful scaling arguments and qualitative reasoning, indispensable for the understanding of experiments and numerical simulations. Basic theoretical lectures will be complemented with lectures on modern experiments to convey the details of physical realizations and experimental methods of the field.


Group Photo


Public Lecture

David R. Nelson, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Arthur K. Solomon Professor of Biophysics, Harvard University, “The Physics of Thermal Crumpling and Wrinkling” in Duane Physics G1B30 on Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 7-8:30pm. Click here for YouTube video.


Lecturers and seminar speakers

  • Mark Bowick (Syracuse University)
  • Noel Clark (University of Colorado)
  • Zvonimir Dogic (Brandeis University)
  • Eric Dufresne (Yale University)
  • Efi Efrati (Weizmann Institute of Science)
  • William Irvine (University of Chicago)
  • Jean-François Joanny (Institut Curie)
  • Mehran Kardar (MIT)
  • Oleg Lavrentovich (Kent State University)
  • Pierre Le Doussal (Ecole Normale Superieure)
  • Alex Levine (UCLA)
  • Tom Lubensky (University of Pennsylvania)
  • Cristina Marchetti (Syracuse University)
  • Lisa Manning (Syracuse University)
  • Narayanan Menon (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
  • Sidney Nagel (University of Chicago)
  • David Nelson (Harvard University)
  • Leo Radzihovsky (University of Colorado)
  • Jennifer Ross (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
  • Ivan Smalyukh (University of Colorado)
  • John Toner (University of Oregon)
  • Vincenzo Vitelli (Leiden University)