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In Loving Memory of George "Bud" M. Homsy (1943 - 2024)

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Steve Granick

Some Puzzles and Research Opportunities in Soft Materials

University of Massachusetts

Event Details:

Monday, March 13, 2023
4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT

Location

(In Person) Shriram 104

This event is open to:

Alumni/Friends
Faculty/Staff
Members
Students

Some Puzzles and Research Opportunities in Soft Materials


Steve Granick
Director, IBS Center for Soft and Living Matter, South Korea
Robert Barrett Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering,
University of Massachusetts, USA

Abstract: A fundamental challenge of modern physical science is to form structure that is not frozen in place but instead reconfigures internally driven by energy throughput and adapts to its environment robustly. Exploring the potential of liquid-phase TEM to image individual molecules and their mutual interactions, we analyze failed and successful encounters of polymers, proteins, and enzymes. In living cells, we find that transportation efficiency problems bear a provocative parallel with polymer chain trajectories with their spatial extent, and with jammed matter in their time evolution. With catalytic enzymes, we find problems of mechanobiology. A picture emerges in which simple experiments, performed at single-particle and single-molecule resolution, can dissect macroscopic phenomena in ways that surprise.

Bio: Steve Granick is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his other major awards are the Paris-Sciences Medal, APS national Polymer Physics Prize, and ACS national Colloid and Surface Chemistry Prize.

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