Roster of Participants

Organizer

Photo & Contact Information Research Interests

Shiladitya Banerjee
Email

I develop theory and computational models to study the mechanics and self-organization of biological active matter.


Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Website

Eric Dufresne
Email

I am an experimentalist with interests in the physics of biological and biologically-inspired materials.


Institution: Cornell University
Website

Leo Radzihovsky
Email

My theoretical research interests span a broad spectrum of classical and quantum condensed matter. These range from entropy-dominated liquid crystals, colloids, membranes, rubber and other “soft” matter to quantum matter, such as superconductors, magnets, degenerate atomic gases, quantum Hall and other topological states of matter, most recently fractons and their interplay of elasticity duals. I aim to understand the nature of phases and phase transitions exhibited by these systems, with the unifying theme of collective universal behavior that emerges at long scales and low energies, driven by a combination of strong interactions, fluctuations, and/or local heterogeneity.


Institution: University of Colorado, Boulder
Website

Lecturer

Photo & Contact Information Research Interests

Itai Cohen
Email

I am an experimentalist. I study the physics of matter in motion. At Cornell, my research has focused on building microscopic robots, controlling the shear thickening behavior of microscopic and nanoscopic particles suspended in a fluid, exploring the mechanics of materials ranging from biological tissues to origami inspired metamaterials, discovering the aerodynamic and neuromuscular mechanisms used by insects during flapping flight, and determining how audiences at heavy metal concerts coordinate their movement. Understanding how emergent behaviors arise from the microscopic rules governing these systems remains one of the biggest challenges in Physics.


Institution: Cornell University
Website

Markus Deserno
Email

I use theoretical and computational tools to understand how the properties of lipid bilayers emerge from their constituents and how the resulting membranes contribute to a host of biological functions.


Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Website

Douglas Durian
Email

I am an experimentalist with a long-standing interest in particulate forms of soft matter such as foams, granular media, suspensions. Recent interest in intersection of machine learning and soft matter, and now electronic and mechanical metamaterials that can learn complex functionality using local rules.


Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Website

Edouard Hannezo
Email

I am a theoretical biophysicist - our group is particularly interested in using soft and active matter theory to understand multicellular self-organization.


Institution: Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Website

Andrea Liu
Email

I am interested in theoretical and computational soft and living matter.


Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Website

Lisa Manning
Email

I am a theorist who studies the collective behavior of group of cells in biological tissues as well as deformation and failure in disordered solids ranging from glasses to granular materials. We use computational and theoretical techniques and extend tools from statistical and soft matter physics to understand and predict emergent phenomena in these far from equilibrium systems, and work closely with experimentalists and scientists around the globe.


Institution: Syracuse University
Website

Yanlan Mao
Email

I am an experimentalist who uses an interdisciplinary approach, combining genetics, imaging, mathematical modelling and engineering approaches to study how tissues grow to their right shape during development, how they maintain this shape during homeostasis, and how they repair back to their ideal shape after injury.


Institution: University College London
Website

Sabetta Matsumoto
Email

I am an experimentalist interested in untangling the relationship between the geometry and topology of a material and its emergent mechanical properties. I am particularly interested in the geometry and topology of textiles


Institution: Georgia Tech
Website

Michael Murrell
Email

I am an experimentalist. I study the non-equilibrium properties of macromolecular assemblies, cells and tissues.


Institution: Yale University
Website

Manu Prakash
Email

I am an experimentalist. I use highly interdisciplinary approaches including theory and experiments to understand how computation is embodied in biological matter. Examples include cognition in single cell protists, morphological computing in animals with no neurons and origins of complex behavior in multi-cellular systems. Broadly, I invent new tools for studying non-model organisms with significant focus on life in the ocean - addressing fundamental questions of cell biology in context of its ecology? I am also dedicated towards inventing, building and scaling-up “frugal science” tools to democratize access to science such as Foldscope, diagnostics of deadly diseases like malaria and convening global citizen science communities to tackle planetary scale environmental challenges such as mosquito or plankton surveillance by citizen sailors mapping the ocean in the age of Anthropocene.


Institution: Stanford University
Website

Ulrich Schwarz
Email

I am a theoretical physicist with a background in statistical, soft matter and biophysics. I am working mainly on modeling cell adhesion and mechanics across scales, from the cytoskeleton and molecular motors through single cells up to the tissue level.


Institution: Heidelberg University, Institute for Theoretical Physics
Website

Julia Yeomans
Email

I am a theorist. I apply techniques from theoretical and computational physics to problems in soft condensed matter and biophysics. I am currently particularly interested in active matter and mechanobiology.


Institution: University of Oxford
Website

David Zwicker
Email

I am a theorists who tries to understand how biological matter is organized. My group analyze theoretical models of biological processes using tools from statistical physics, dynamical system theory, fluid dynamics, and information theory.


Institution: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
Website