Professor Driscoll is a soft condensed matter experimentalist, and her research lies at the junction between soft-matter physics and fluid dynamics. Before coming to Northwestern, she was a postdoctoral associate at New York University, working with Paul Chaikin in the Center for Soft Matter Research. She completed her PhD in 2014 with Sid Nagel at the University of Chicago. The Driscoll lab focuses on understanding how structure and patterns emerge in a driven system, and how to use this structure formation as a new way to probe nonequillibrium systems. They study emergent structures in a diverse array of driven systems, from the microscopic to larger-scale. By developing a deeper understanding of patterns and structures which emerge dynamically in a driven material, they can learn not only how these structures can be controlled, but also how to use them to connect macroscopic behavior to microscopic properties. She can be found on Twitter @driscollphysics.
Read Michelle’s Emerging Investigator article “Gel rupture during dynamic swelling” and check out all of the 2021 Soft Matter Emerging Investigator articles here.
