Soft Matter Blog

Shelby Hutchens is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering. Her research interests span from ultrasoft polymeric materials characterization to plant-inspired motion. She received all her degrees in Chemical Engineering, Ph.D. and M.S. from Caltech and B.S. from Oklahoma State. She received an NSF CAREER award in 2017. She can be found on Twitter @ShelbyHutchens.

Read Shelby’s Emerging Investigator article “On the relationship between cutting and tearing in soft elastic solids” and check out all of the 2021 Soft Matter Emerging Investigator articles here.

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Many excellent articles on soft fracture find their way into Soft Matter. The community of researchers interested in this topic really seems to keep an eye on the journal, so I think it’s a great place for our findings relating cutting and tearing in elastomeric solids. It’s a particularly useful venue when results seem to bridge subfields, for instance, continuum mechanics and macromolecular science. 

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

For myself, I am excited about finally starting to understand how various material and geometric elements contribute to an overall failure response in soft solids. This isn’t to say that I think this problem is fully solved or that others did not understand much of it already. I’m still somewhat new to failure so it’s been very rewarding to get to the point that I can describe phenomena in my own words and start to probe new hypotheses. The most challenging thing about my research is that the more I do it, the less I find that I actually know. It can be exciting as well as daunting. 

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

I don’t feel qualified to make any judgement since so many questions can seem incorrectly important or unimportant at any given time. With respect to soft solid fracture, I do think many interesting, fundamental, and likely important details remain to be understood in the failure of even simple, homogeneous solids with respect to predicting time-dependence, the effect of geometry (like needle insertion and puncture), and failure initiation, for example, from macromolecular architecture. Complications only increase when inhomogeneities and hierarchies come into play, as is the case in soft biological tissue. 

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Even if you start behind or are a bit slow, just keep at it. You’ve probably heard the saying that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but even a single neighborhood wasn’t built in a day. And neighborhoods have a very meaningful impact on those living in them. 

Lauren earned a B.A. in chemistry and a B.S. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University, and completed a postdoc at MIT. Currently, she is an assistant professor at Penn State with appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Her group’s research interests include the study of responsive systems, active matter, tunable optical materials, and laser direct writing of nanomaterials. She can be found on Twitter @laurenzarzar.

Read Lauren’s Emerging Investigator article “Interfacially-adsorbed particles enhance the self-propulsion of oil droplets in aqueous surfactant” and check out all of the 2021 Soft Matter Emerging Investigator articles here.

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Soft Matter is a great journal to publish and follow exciting research in areas such as a colloids, polymers, emulsions, and soft interfaces.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

Right now I am excited to understand how to control the motion and interactions between out-of-equilibrium materials such as droplets by using chemical gradients. A challenge is that many of the driving forces (like the chemical gradients, the local interfacial tensions) are very difficult to directly measure or visualize on the microscale. We often have to make inferences based on the observed behaviors and trends we find when doing systematic studies.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Living systems are all out of equilibrium, making them highly adaptive. Yet, as chemists, we are very used to thinking about reactions proceeding to an equilibrium state. How do we design chemical systems that can be continuously driven and persist in different non-equilibrium states for long time periods?

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Don’t be afraid to dive into unfamiliar research fields; you don’t have to be an expert to discover something exciting and make an impact.

Rana Ashkar is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, where she joined the Physics Department in 2018. Prior to her current appointment, she held a Clifford G. Shull Fellowship at Oak Ridge National Lab, preceded by a joint postdoc position at NIST and the University of Maryland. Dr. Ashkar has a Ph.D. in experimental physics from Indiana University. Her doctoral work was recognized by the Esther L. Kinsley dissertation award. Her research group focuses on biophysical investigations of model cell membranes, with specific emphasis on membrane mechanics, membrane-protein interactions, and dynamic membrane responses to interfacial and environmental cues. Besides scholarly achievements, Dr. Ashkar is committed to diversity and inclusion in STEM and has been an active member on several committees promoting a better environment for underrepresented and marginalized groups in science. She was the founder and first chairperson of the “Women in Neutron Sciences” program at Oak Ridge National Lab. She recently served as the Chair of the APS Climate Site Visits Program, the flagship program of the APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics. Currently, she serves on the executive committee of the APS Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) and one of her priorities is to establish programs to empower marginalized groups and ensure equitable recognition of their contributions.

Read Rana’s Emerging Investigator article “The dynamic face of liquid membranes” and check out all of the 2021 Soft Matter Emerging Investigator articles here.

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Soft Matter provides an excellent platform where research areas at the intersection of physics, biology, and chemistry are best showcased to a broad readership.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

The most exciting part of being a scientist and a faculty member is the role we play in the education and scientific development of graduate and undergraduate students and their engagement in research questions that are central to health, societal needs, and technological developments.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

The dynamics of cell membranes are central to life but there are still major gaps in our understanding of membranes “in action”, particularly on the nanoscale where vital biological functions take place. This includes protein-membrane interactions, cell signaling, and even viral budding. Developing tools, theories, and simulations that fill these knowledge gaps will be crucial to our understanding of cellular functions and how we utilize this knowledge in therapeutic discoveries and biotechnological advances.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

My advice for early career scientists, especially graduate students and postdocs, would be to follow their passion, to persist, and not be afraid to challenge existing dogmas. I would also encourage them to be mindful and adopt inclusive research practices that would help create a better science environment.