Boulder School 2024: Self-Organizing Matter: From Inanimate to the Animate

July 1-26, 2024

Scientific Coordinators

Shiladitya Banerjee (Carnegie Mellon)
Andela Saric (IST Austria)
Eric R. Dufresne (Cornell)
Margaret L. Gardel (Chicago)

Director: Leo Radzihovsky (CU Boulder)

BSS2024 image

Living systems exhibit remarkable self-organization and dynamics at all length scales and requires matter that is both active and adaptable. Within a cell, biomolecules actively convert energy to collectively self-organize into dynamic assemblies that enable a cell to move, divide, organize into functional compartments, undergo shape changes, and adapt to changing environment. Understanding how to rationally design such active and adaptable matter will revolutionize materials science, enabling us to design materials capable of moving, processing information, sensing, and adapting its mechanical properties. This summer school will bring together physicists, biologists and material scientists to cover a wide range of topics in the physics of self-organized matter, from inanimate to the animate. The lectures will focus on understanding collective and programmable effects in nature and in engineered systems, such as smart metamaterials, synthetic active matter, cytoskeleton, cells, and tissues.

Lecturers and seminar speakers (tentative)

P. Bassereau (Curie)
I. Cohen (Cornell)
M. Das (Rochester)
M. Deserno (Carnegie Mellon)
D. Durian (UPenn)
E. Hannezo (IST Austria)
W.  Jacobs (Princeton)
A. Liu (UPenn)
A. Lucas (Boulder)
L. Manning (Syracuse)
Y. Mao (UCL)
C. Marchetti (UCSB)
E. Matsumoto (Georgia Tech)
N. Mitchell (Chicago)
M. Murrell (Yale)
M. Prakash (Stanford)
U. Schwarz (Heidelberg)
V. Vitelli (Chicago)
K. Wan (Exeter)
J. Yeomans (Oxford)
D. Zwicker (MPI-DS)