Soft Matter Blog

We are delighted to announce that 12th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC12) will be held at the University of York on 20 – 23 July 2015. Abstracts are now invited for this event so submit today and take advantage of this excellent opportunity to present your work alongside scientists from across the globe.

This cutting edge international research conference is organised around four exciting and diverse areas of the application of materials chemistry. One prominent theme at MC12 is Soft Matter Materials, which aims to cover the wide and varied aspects of soft matter materials showing the power of the interplay between a priori design and physical function. Visit http://rsc.li/mc12 to find out more and submit your abstract today.

The Soft-Fire 2014 conference will be held on July 29 – August 8 | Cargèse, Corse | France

Soft condensed matter is the subject of a large number of investigations all around the world, both from a fundamental point of view and from a more applied side, due to the large number of practical possibilities relying on the aptitude of soft matter to provide large responses to small sollicitations.

Academic talks (confirmed)

• N. Balsara (Univ. Berkeley) : Polymers for electronics
• P. Chaikin (NY University, USA): Active matter
• E. Charlaix (Univ. Grenoble, France): Confined systems: mechanical measurements
• J. Fourkas (Univ. Maryland): Optical techniques for biophysics
• M.-C. Jullien (ESPCI, France) : Microfluidics
• C. Knobler (UCLA, USA) : Physical virology
• K. Kremer (MPI Polymerforshung, Mainz) : Statistical physics – Numerical simulations
• R. Kimmich (Univ. Ulm, Germany): Spectroscopic techniques for the examination of molecular dynamics in mesoscopically confined fluids
• O. Lavrentovich (Kent State Univ.): Dynamics and liquid crystals
• H. Lekkerkerker (Univ. Utrecht, Netherland): Self organization in Colloidal Suspensions of Spheres, Rods, Plates and Boards
• C. Sanchez (Collège de France, Paris): Hybrid materials
• M. Stamm (Institutes für Physikalische Chemie und Physik der Polymere, Leibniz, Germany): Concepts to save energy with polymers
• C. Wilhelm (CNRS, Université Denis Diderot): Bionanomagnetism

Please see here for fees for registration and Abstract submission and pre-registration

The joint symposium of the 22nd Polymer Networks Group Meeting (PNG) and the 10th Gel Symposium sponsored by Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo, (PN&G2014) will provide a platform for scientific exchange in all areas relevant to theory and simulation, fabrication, structure, properties, and industrial/medical applications of gels. This symposium will focus on “Cutting Edge of Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering in Polymer Networks (PhysChemEng).”

A list of Plenary and Keynote speakers can be found here.

Please see the conference website to register your attendance or submit an abstract.

The 11th International Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery Symposium (NanoDDS’13) will be held Oct. 25-26, 2013 at the University of California, San Diego. NanoDDS is the key annual event for researchers developing next-generation delivery vehicles: targeted, responsive, biodegradable nanomaterials for drug delivery, diagnostics, noninvasive imaging, and regenerative medicine. This symposium, co-chaired by Adah Almutairi of UC San Diego and Andrew Mackay of the University of Southern California, features a diverse group of creative, high-profile investigators, including Erkki Ruoslahti, Samuel Stupp, and Allan Hoffman.

Abstracts for poster presentations will be accepted from May through September; the top three abstracts will win prizes and oral presentation slots.

More information can be found here.

Short Course: Designing Soft Nano and Microstructured Materials: Processing and Commercial Applications
Sunday May 12, 2013, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, Washington, DC, USA

Soft materials are a fascinating class of fluids that have unusual, complex, “squishy” properties that are imparted by a surprisingly small amount of added ingredients. This overview course surveys the application of a wide range of soft materials, both aqueous and non-aqueous, using colloids, surfactants, polymers, and the mesoscale structures they can form. The student will be exposed to current and historical work in the field, with an emphasis on commercial processing and applications like foods, personal care products, drug formulations, oil exploration, and materials synthesis. Numerous examples will be shared and used as the basis to “tunnel down” to smaller length scales to explore the microscopic and molecular reasons for the unique behavior of soft materials on a large scale.

A visual approach, using movies and images, is taken to explore the field and share the small-scale insights gained from techniques like microscopy, microfluidics, and microrheology. Because one of the key attributes of soft materials is their mechanical and rheological behavior, wherever possible the link between microstructure and bulk properties will be explained and used to motivate their range of applications.

The survey and guidelines presented in the class are assembled into a set of course notes intended to serve as a standalone guide to designing various classes of soft materials and a reference for current research in the area and practical techniques of characterization and formulation.

Course Instructor
Pat Spicer has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware (1992) and a PhD in (1997) Chemical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, where his research focused on design and synthesis of colloidal and nanoparticle materials. After defending his thesis he went to work for the Procter & Gamble Company, leading their Crystallization group in the Corporate Engineering Division and supporting the scale-up and manufacture of complex fluid products for all of P&G’s product areas. After 15 years with P&G, Pat began work as an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. There his research focuses on the design and development of microstructured fluid materials and understanding of their kinetic behavior.