Frontiers in Chemistry & Chemical Engineering

Through the magic of ‘active matter,' which converts chemical energy into mechanical work to drive emergent properties, biology solves a myriad of seemingly impossible physical challenges. In my lab, we combine experiment and theory to direct the flow of matter by embedding dynamic constituents into engineered soft materials. We design 2D composite materials with flowing elastic networks that govern the phase separation and coarsening of lipid domains on fluid interfaces. I will also present our new work on feedback control and learning of colloidal dynamics subjected to active or hydrodynamic forces. We propose a framework called "top-down fluid mechanics" to learn the multibody interactions in complex fluids using intensity data alone from optical microscopy.