Are you interested in glass transitions in polyelectrolyte complexes? Check out these two new papers published in @pubs.acs.org Macromolecules by Isaac Ramírez Marrero
and our collaborators in UMass PSE and @basf.bsky.social!
doi.org/10.1021/acs....
doi.org/10.1021/acs....
BOSTON!
ONE WEEK FROM TODAY:
I am going to be in conversation with historian and fellow physicist Evelynn Hammonds!! THE EVELYNN HAMMONDS!!
It feels a little historic (or a lot) and I hope all of Boston will come 🖖🏽
💙📚
www.eventbrite.com/e/chanda-pre...
📢The nomination deadline for the 2026 Soft Matter Lectureship is fast approaching!
‼️Deadline: 30th April 2026
Don't miss your chance to nominate an early career researcher who has made major contributions to soft matter research.
Learn more about the award: lnkd.in/eMhN7bEW
“Oobleck” (that water and cornstarch staple of DIY science experiments) still holds some surprises. Dense drops of oobleck with high shear rates spread out like a liquid before stiffening into a solid. arstechnica.com/science/2026...
Congratulations to my collaborator Ashlee McGovern as well as all awardees!
Gave a seminar at UIowa this past academic year.
They reimbursed me for mileage. $0 speaking fee.
But I did hear news about how tight budgets were and how depts were making "hard choices."
Guess not everywhere on that campus.
Protein encapsulation in complex coacervates as a function of charge density, sequence, and hydrophobicity.
Check out our new paper in @pubs.acs.org Biomacromolecules on "Tuning Protein Uptake through Charge and Hydrophobicity in Peptide-Based Complex Coacervates." You have built up your intuition about a phenomenon. . . and then surprising results happen. doi.org/10.1021/acs....
We would like to invite you to join us for the monthly virtual Future of Rheology seminar series on Thursday, March 26th, 2026, from 1–2:00 PM EDT, kicking off the new 2026–2027 round, which will run from March 2026 through February 2027
Are you a early career scientist looking to increase the crosslinking in your polymer? Join the SPLASHY Early Career Meet and Greet at 3 p.m. to network with other SPLASHY students, postdocs, and leadership - there’ll be snacks!👀 summit.aps.org/events/EVT-S04
🚀 Get involved with DSNP! It’s a great opportunity, especially for grad students and postdocs, to grow your network and share new ideas.
📲 Scan the QR code in the slide or follow the link to sign up!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
#APS #PhysicsCommunity #StatisticalPhys #NonlinearPhysics
Curve Appeal: The Architecture and Engineering of Membrane Bending This webinar, hosted by the Membrane Structure & Function Subgroup of the Biophysical Society, and organized by Adam Smith, will highlight how lipid composition, protein assemblies, and membrane mechanics work together to generate and regulate membrane curvature in cells. Three invited speakers will present on membrane bending in a way that's accessible to undergraduate students interested in biochemistry and biophysics, with sufficiently many fun new things sprinkled in to also be interesting to specialists in the field. Invited speakers are: Itay Budin (UC San Diego) Margaret E. Johnson (Johns Hopkins University) Cecília Leal (University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign). Sign-up link for the webinar: https://my.biophysics.org/Events/Calendar-Of-Events/Meeting-Home-Page?meetingid=95b51c20-8219-f111-8342-7ced8d22117d We hope to have as lively an event as we had a year ago, when we also hosted a biophysics membrane webinar! Log in—it'll be fun! Please share widely!
📣 To celebrate Biophysics Week, the Membrane Structure and Function Subgroup (MSAF) of @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social will host a webinar on March 24 at 11am EDT. Our speakers are @mejohnson81.bsky.social, @ibudin.bsky.social, and Cecília Leal (not on 🦋). 🧪
👀 More info in the alt text! Please share! 🔄
Today's the day! Can't wait to see you all there and kick off Global Physics Summit 2026
@apsphysics.bsky.social
This is such a nice event! I'm very impressed.
Squishy Science Sunday is back at the Global Physics Summit! Join us for hands-on activities about physics, including the physics of slime, sand, and cotton candy! Find us at Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Use code APSSQUISHY26 for a discount on general admission tickets!
Are you ready for the APS Global Physics Summit? For all you soft matter lovers, we’ve gathered a list of the DSOFT invited sessions below. For the full GPS schedule, see summit.aps.org/schedule/
Excellent Department of Energy funding opportunity for people in EPSCoR states: science.osti.gov/-/media/gran...
Up to $1 million over 4 years 👏🏽
🧪🔭⚛️
We are excited to present the finalists for this year's DSOFT Emerging Soft Matter Excellence Award! Join us in celebrating the work of these exceptional soft matter physics students, who will present their work in a special DSOFT Awards Session at the 2026 APS Global Physics Summit.
An op ed next to mine claimed indoctrination is happening. The problem with that? The author had little evidence, only one weak study that said it “looks like” students are being indoctrinated.
Believe the EVIDENCE. Indoctrination is not a problem for higher ed and no excuse for censorship.
Delighted this paper is out! Soft solids fracture in complex ways. Can we control it using structure and activity? Yes, using defects that localize energy injection for targeted failure! Amazing work combining exp, theory & ML by Sheng Chen and collab with Murrell lab (Yale).
I am very excited that our latest work is now out in @nature.com: Brownian mechanical metamaterials! Great work by Julio Melio, in collaboration with Martin van Hecke and Silke Henkes: rdcu.be/e5H86!
Excited to share our new preprint exploring how Paramecium achieves diverse flow functions, i.e. feeding and swimming, simultaneously. This work was spearheaded by our ExM expert, PhD student Daphne Laan @daphnelaan.bsky.social :
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Watch the latest #KITP Blackboard Lunch talk by Karen Daniels (NC State) —
Rigidity (or not) on the Earth's surface and beyond
The next Future of #Rheology seminar Thurs, 2/26 1-2:00 EST, explores #colloidal #suspensions.
•A Aminimajd: Graph Neural Network for Multitask Prediction of Rheology and Micro Behavior in Suspensions
•G Legrand: LAOStrain Response of Colloid-polymer Hydrogels: Rheo-USAXS and Rheo-electric Expts
So how much money is an average science lab getting back because of the stupid and illegal tariffs on everything from pipette tips to instruments?
Asking for several thousands of colleagues...
Great to see our paper on light-intensity dependent swimming patterns in #Chlamydomonas out now in Phys Rev Lett. as an Editors' suggestion! With a nice commentary by @philipcball.bsky.social.
Chlamy actively modulate the beat planes of their #cilia!
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... #protistsonsky
Our new paper, led by @ramsudhirsharma.bsky.social (with Alexandre Leonelli, Kevin Zhao, Eckart Meiburg), has been published in @apsphysics.bsky.social PRL. We revisit hourglasses/silos and ask what really sets the discharge rate. See more here: doi.org/10.1103/3g2f-nslz
🚨 AAUP has received reports that, in at least one UH college, a dean has already implemented a course review process “to ensure alignment with SB37” and “academic integrity” and has directed faculty to remove or modify syllabi content on race, LGBTQ+ and other issues.
aaup-texas.org/blog/f/uh-pr...
I wish university presses would try to get some physics textbooks by women published
Too much push for memoir, not enough push for “write about the thing you do”
Many condensates can be described as active soft materials that generate molecular fluxes. Here we develop a new #nonequilibrium approach (TRACE) to study molecular transport through condensates! Work led by Yashraj Wani!!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
