Condensed and Living Matter Seminars

Upcoming Condensed and Living Matter Seminars



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Light Probes and Structural Color in Dense Complex Media: Lost Between Single and Multiple Scattering

Frank Scheffold (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, 2N3

Visible light can be used to probe dense, complex media such as colloidal suspensions or compact sediments. In liquid samples, the temporal fluctuations contain information about the local viscoelastic…



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar

Jie Wang (Temple University)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8


Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Living Stealthy Hyperuniformity

Alison Sweeney (Yale)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

Structural color and transparency are common phenomena in life - these optical properties are found in many species of mammals, birds, insects, and even bacteria. This talk discusses our recent…



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Which Material is worth Studying? (from the viewpoint of quantum materials)

Leslie Schoop (Princeton)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

Quantum materials are hoped to change technology in various aspects. However, most of the desired applications are hindered by the lack of suitable materials. While we know tens of thousands of crystalline…

Past Condensed and Living Matter Seminars



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Physical approaches to understanding and predicting viral evolution

John Barton (University of Pittsburgh)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

How predictable is evolution? This question has inspired biological research for decades, but it remains challenging to address quantitatively. In this talk, I will describe how we adapted methods from…



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Motility regulation as a self-organization principle

Julien Tailleur (MIT)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

Equilibrium statistical mechanics tells us how to control the self-assembly of passive materials by tuning the competition between energy and entropy to achieve desired states of organization. Out of…



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Quantum Control of Quantum Materials

Matteo Mitrano (Harvard)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, 2N3

Coherently engineering quantum states with light is a key frontier in the control of quantum materials. Over the last two decades, ultrafast lasers have revealed a variety of emergent topological, magnetic, and…



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Far-from-Equilibrium Statistical Physics: Information and Response in Living Matter

Zhiyue Lu (UNC)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

Statistical mechanics, first developed for equilibrium systems, stands as one of physics' greatest triumphs. Living systems, however, operate far from equilibrium, processing information and…



Condensed, Soft & Living Matter Seminar: Robust prediction of moiré material topology

Valentin Crepel (Flatiron Institute)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

Moiré materials have recently been envisioned as condensed-matter quantum simulators [1] due to their highly tunable low-energy properties controlled by chemical composition, stacking configurations, twist…