Seminars

Upcoming Seminars



Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Strongly Driven Quantum Materials "

David Hsieh, Caltech
- See Zoom link below

Driving strongly correlated electron systems far from equilibrium can lead to fundamentally new many-body phenomena that are thermally inaccessible. In this talk, I will describe a series of recent…



Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Interlayer Excitons and Magneto-Exciton Condensation in van der Waals Heterostructures"

Philip Kim, Harvard
- See Zoom link below

A pair of electrons and holes across the interface of semiconductor heterostructure can form a bound quantum state of the interlayer exciton. In a coupled interface between atomically thin van der Waals…



Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: "Biological tissues as mechanical metamaterials"

Lisa Manning (Syracuse University)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

Abstract: In multicellular organisms, properly programmed collective motion is required to form tissues and organs, and this programming breaks down in diseases like cancer. Recent experimental work…



Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Quantum optics meets correlated electrons"

Mohammad Hafezi, University of Maryland
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

One of the key challenges in the development of quantum technologies is the control of light-matter interaction at the quantum level where individual excitations matter. During the past couple of decades…



Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Twisting nodal superconductors"

Jed Pixley, Rutgers
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

The realization of correlated insulators and superconductivity in twisted van der Waals heterostructures has brought forth twisting as a new control knob in condensed matter laboratories. In this talk we…

Past Seminars



Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Non reciprocal phase transitions"

Vincenzo Vitelli, University of Chicago
- See Zoom link below

The interaction between a peregrine falcon and a dove is visibly non-reciprocal. What happens to the well established framework of phase transitions in non-reciprocal systems far from equilibrium?…



Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Life in a Tight Spot: How Bacteria Swim, Disperse, and Grow in Crowded Spaces"

Sujit Datta, Princeton University
- See Zoom link below

Bacterial motility and growth play central roles in agriculture, the environment, and medicine. While bacterial behavior is typically studied in bulk liquid or on flat surfaces, many bacterial habitats—e.…



Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: "The synergy of biophysics and active materials" *POSTPONED*

Arnold Matthijssen (University of Pennsylvania)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8 (also see Zoom link below)

Understanding the physics of living systems allows us to design new materials that are active and adaptive, akin to cells and tissues. Conversely, these active matter systems can reveal fundamental…



Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Pattern formation in biological systems via mechanical instabilities and phase separation"

Andrej Kosmrlj, Princeton University
- See Zoom link below

Pattern formation is ubiquitous in biological systems. While pattern formations are often associated with Turing-like reaction-diffusion systems, biology also exploits many other mechanisms such as…



Mathematical Biology seminar: "Inductive Bias of Neural Networks"

Cengiz Pehlevan (Harvard University)
- See Zoom link below

: Predicting a previously unseen example from training examples is unsolvable without additional assumptions about the nature of the task at hand. A learner’s performance depends…