Optimal design of soft matter - including a celebration of Women in Materials Science (WMS)

Workshop theme

Soft matter systems range from fluids, colloids, to active and biological matter. Such materials have prominent role in Nature and are key to various applications used in our daily lives, from rubbers, paints, adhesives, displays to biological elements and biopharmaceuticals. Modern soft matter is starting to get into the capacity that desired material properties can be controllably designed, with design routes including self-assembly, microfluidics, micro manipulation, genetic encoding, and other. Can such design routes be optimized? Can one design “optimal matter”, of course for some application? Are there mathematical and other tools and methodologies that can lead in such optimal design?

The goal of this workshop is to address challenges in the optimal design of soft matter, identifying the most productive directions for research and applications and discussing the development of new methodological approaches. The workshop will bring together scientists of various backgrounds –from physics, mathematics, engineering, to chemistry- to discuss and work in this one week in the stimulating environment of Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge. The program will consist of invited talks, contributed talks, and posters.

The proportion of women working in selected areas of materials science significantly exceeds the proportion of women working in mathematics more broadly and in recognition of this, we have embedded a Celebration of Women in Materials Science (WMS) programme into this workshop. Finally, the optimal design of matter -in general- is a topic of growing interest and this workshop aims to contribute to future spectacular advances in the world of complex materials.

The application is closed

Timetable

Monday 13th May 2019
09:00 to 09:30	Registration	No Room Required
09:30 to 09:40	Welcome from Christie Marr (INI Deputy Director)	No Room Required
09:40 to 10:20	Randall Kamien University of Pennsylvania Packing Liquid Crystal Domains	Room 1
10:20 to 10:40	Thomas Machon University of Bristol Contact Topology and the Cholesteric Landscape	Room 1
10:40 to 11:10	Morning Coffee	No Room Required
11:10 to 11:50	Margarida Telo da Gama Universidade de Lisboa Self-organization of patchy colloidal particles: 2 & 3D	Room 1
11:50 to 12:30	Anja Schlömerkemper Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg Evolution of magneto-viscoelastic materials	Room 1
12:30 to 13:30	Lunch at Westminster College	No Room Required
13:30 to 14:10	Hillel Aharoni Weizmann Institute of Science Making Faces: Universal Inverse Design of Thin Nematic Elastomer Surfaces	Room 1
14:10 to 14:50	Ard Louis University of Oxford Simplicity bias in random design	Room 1
14:50 to 15:20	Afternoon Tea	No Room Required
15:20 to 16:00	Gareth Alexander University of Warwick Geometric Topology of Liquid Crystal Textures: Chirality and Bend	Room 1
16:00 to 16:40	Alex Travesset Iowa State University Soft Skyrmions and Programmable Self-Assembly of Superlattices	Room 1
16:40 to 17:00	Shayandev Sinha Harvard University Thermally actuated portable microvalves using elastomeric focusing	Room 1
17:00 to 18:00	Welcome Drinks Reception and poster session at INI	No Room Required

Tuesday 14th May 2019
09:00 to 09:40	Daniel Joseph Needleman Harvard University Structure, Mechanics, and Thermodynamics of Mixtures of Microtubules and Molecular Motors	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Jorn Dunkel Massachusetts Institute of Technology Towards rationally designed active metamaterials	Room 1
10:20 to 10:40	Nicholas Tito Technische Universiteit Eindhoven Exploiting entropy to enhance toughness in polymer gels with reversible crosslinks	Room 1
10:40 to 11:10	Morning Coffee	No Room Required
11:10 to 11:50	Bianca Stroffolini Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II Function spaces meet material science: Orlicz-Sobolev nematic elastomers	Room 1
11:50 to 12:30	Carme Calderer University of Minnesota Modeling and analysis of chromonic liquid crystal condensates	Room 1
12:30 to 13:30	Lunch at Westminster College	No Room Required
13:30 to 14:10	Julia Yeomans University of Oxford Bacteria: self-motile liquid crystals?	Room 1
14:10 to 14:50	Elisabetta Matsumoto Georgia Institute of Technology Twisted topological tangles: or the knot theory of knitting	Room 1
14:50 to 15:20	Afternoon Tea	No Room Required
15:20 to 16:00	Anton Souslov University of Bath Odd elasticity in soft active solids	Room 1
16:00 to 16:40	Martin Copic Univerza v Ljubljani; Jozef Stefan Institute Q-tensor model of twist-bend and splay nematic phases	Room 1
16:40 to 17:00	Mikhail Osipov University of Strathclyde Orientational ordering and self-organisation of nanoparticles in liquid crystal and polymer nanocomposites	Room 1

Wednesday 15th May 2019
09:00 to 09:40	Monica Olvera de la Cruz Northwestern University Control of Magnetoelastic Matter	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Daphne Klotsa University of North Carolina A touch of non-linearity: mesoscale swimmers and active matter in fluids	Room 1
10:20 to 10:40	Anja Pusovnik University of Ljubljana Liquid crystal metamaterials from nematic colloidal platelets	Room 1
10:40 to 11:10	Morning Coffee	No Room Required
11:10 to 11:50	Miha Ravnik University of Ljubljana; Jozef Stefan Institute Design of passive and active passive nematic defects	Room 1
11:50 to 12:30	Davide Marenduzzo University of Edinburgh Self-assembly of liquid crystal mixtures: cubic fluid cylinders, elastic emulsions and colloid-active gels composites	Room 1
12:30 to 13:30	Lunch at Westminster College	No Room Required
13:30 to 14:30	Tom Lubensky University of Pennsylvania; 5G Innovation Centre Colloquium: Review of the 2019 NAS Decadal Survey on Materials Research	Room 1
14:30 to 18:00	Free afternoon	No Room Required
19:30 to 22:00	Formal Dinner at Clare College (Garden Room)	No Room Required

Thursday 16th May 2019
09:00 to 09:40	Igor Musevic Jozef Stefan Institute; University of Ljubljana Topological defect formation in a nematic undergoing an extreme temperature quench	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Sriram Ramaswamy Indian Institute of Science Fluid flocks with inertia	Room 1
10:20 to 10:40	Ziga Kos University of Ljubljana Design of micro-confinement for controlled structure formation in non-equilibrium nematic fluids	Room 1
10:40 to 11:10	Morning Coffee	No Room Required
11:10 to 11:50	Tom Lubensky University of Pennsylvania; 5G Innovation Centre Elasticity and Response in Mechanical Topological Lattices	Room 1
11:50 to 12:30	John Ball Heriot-Watt University Some remarks on mathematical theories of liquid crystals	Room 1
12:30 to 13:30	Lunch at Westminster College	No Room Required
13:30 to 14:10	Claudio Zannoni Università di Bologna Bottom Up Modelling of Liquid Crystals and Device Applications	Room 1
14:10 to 14:50	Simon Copar University of Ljubljana Flow-induced states in channel-confined nematics	Room 1
14:50 to 15:20	Afternoon Tea	No Room Required
15:20 to 16:00	Apala Majumdar University of Bath Nematic Pattern Formation on 2D Polygons - a Landau de Gennes study	Room 1
16:00 to 16:40	Lidia Mrad University of Arizona Constrained Energy Minimization for Bent-Core Liquid Crystals	Room 1
16:40 to 17:00	Katherine Macmillan Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Materials from Colloidal Particles using Optical Fields	Room 1

Friday 17th May 2019
09:00 to 09:40	Ivan Smalyukh University of Colorado Nematic colloidal micro-motors powered by light	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Antonio DeSimone SISSA; Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa Reconfigurable surfaces with controlled stretching and shearing: from biological templates to engineering devices	Room 1
10:20 to 10:40	Henrik Ronellenfitsch Massachusetts Institute of Technology Inverse design of discrete mechanical metamaterials	Room 1
10:40 to 11:10	Morning Coffee	No Room Required
11:10 to 11:50	Douwe Jan Bonthuis Freie Universität Berlin; Graz University of Technology Charging of neutral solutes in water	Room 1
11:50 to 12:10	Antonio Prados Universidad de Sevilla Building and optimising finite-time adiabatic processes in stochastic thermodynamics	Room 1
12:10 to 12:30	Dwaipayan Chakrabarti University of Birmingham Colloids Get Creative: Key to Open Crystals	Room 1
12:30 to 13:30	Lunch at Westminster College	No Room Required

The mathematical design of new materials

Optimal design of soft matter - including a celebration of Women in Materials Science (WMS)

Organisers

Randall Kamien University of Pennsylvania
Apala Majumdar University of Bath
Peter Palffy-Muhoray Kent State University
Miha Ravnik University of Ljubljana; Jozef Stefan Institute

Speakers

Hillel Aharoni Weizmann Institute of Science
Gareth Alexander University of Warwick
John Ball Heriot-Watt University
Douwe Jan Bonthuis Freie Universität Berlin; Graz University of Technology
Carme Calderer University of Minnesota
Dwaipayan Chakrabarti University of Birmingham
Simon Copar University of Ljubljana
Martin Copic Univerza v Ljubljani; Jozef Stefan Institute
Antonio DeSimone SISSA; Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa
Jorn Dunkel Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Randall Kamien University of Pennsylvania
Daphne Klotsa University of North Carolina
Ziga Kos University of Ljubljana
Ard Louis University of Oxford
Tom Lubensky University of Pennsylvania; 5G Innovation Centre
Thomas Machon University of Bristol
Katherine Macmillan Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Apala Majumdar University of Bath
Davide Marenduzzo University of Edinburgh
Elisabetta Matsumoto Georgia Institute of Technology
Lidia Mrad University of Arizona
Igor Musevic Jozef Stefan Institute; University of Ljubljana
Daniel Joseph Needleman Harvard University
Monica Olvera de la Cruz Northwestern University
Mikhail Osipov University of Strathclyde
Antonio Prados Universidad de Sevilla
Anja Pusovnik University of Ljubljana
Sriram Ramaswamy Indian Institute of Science
Miha Ravnik University of Ljubljana; Jozef Stefan Institute
Henrik Ronellenfitsch Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anja Schlömerkemper Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Shayandev Sinha Harvard University
Ivan Smalyukh University of Colorado
Anton Souslov University of Bath
Bianca Stroffolini Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Margarida Telo da Gama Universidade de Lisboa
Nicholas Tito Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
Alex Travesset Iowa State University
Julia Yeomans University of Oxford
Claudio Zannoni Università di Bologna

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Participants

Daniele Agostinelli SISSA
Hillel Aharoni Weizmann Institute of Science
Gareth Alexander University of Warwick
John Ball Heriot-Watt University
Douwe Jan Bonthuis Freie Universität Berlin; Graz University of Technology
Carme Calderer University of Minnesota
Mike Cates University of Cambridge
Dwaipayan Chakrabarti University of Birmingham
Nandita Chaturvedi University of Pennsylvania
Xian Chen Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Simon Copar University of Ljubljana
Martin Copic Univerza v Ljubljani; Jozef Stefan Institute
Antonio DeSimone SISSA; Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa
Giovanni Di Fratta Technische Universität Wien
Jorn Dunkel Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jeffrey Everts University of Ljubljana
Irene Fonseca Carnegie Mellon University
Itay Griniasty Weizmann Institute of Science
Simon Guest University of Cambridge
Davit Harutyunyan University of California, Santa Barbara
Richard James University of Minnesota
Randall Kamien University of Pennsylvania
Daphne Klotsa University of North Carolina
Ziga Kos University of Ljubljana
Pavan Kumar Pennsylvania State University
Ard Louis University of Oxford
Tom Lubensky University of Pennsylvania; 5G Innovation Centre
Thomas Machon University of Bristol
Apala Majumdar University of Bath
Davide Marenduzzo University of Edinburgh
Elisabetta Matsumoto Georgia Institute of Technology
Steve Morris University of Oxford
Lidia Mrad University of Arizona
Urban Mur University of Ljubljana
Igor Musevic Jozef Stefan Institute; University of Ljubljana
Daniel Joseph Needleman Harvard University
Monica Olvera de la Cruz Northwestern University
Mikhail Osipov University of Strathclyde
Antonio Prados Universidad de Sevilla
Anja Pusovnik University of Ljubljana
Sriram Ramaswamy Indian Institute of Science
Miha Ravnik University of Ljubljana; Jozef Stefan Institute
Denisse Reyes Arango Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM)
Henrik Ronellenfitsch Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anja Schlömerkemper Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Shayandev Sinha Harvard University
Valeriy Slastikov University of Bristol
Ivan Smalyukh University of Colorado
Anton Souslov University of Bath
Bianca Stroffolini Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Jamie Taylor BCAM - Basque Center for Applied Mathematics
Margarida Telo da Gama Universidade de Lisboa
Nicholas Tito Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
Alex Travesset Iowa State University
Mark Warner University of Cambridge
Julia Yeomans University of Oxford
Claudio Zannoni Università di Bologna
Arghir Zarnescu BCAM - Basque Center for Applied Mathematics; Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy