Soft Matter Blog

We are pleased to welcome new Associate Editor, Professor Jan K. G. Dhont (Forschungszentrum Jülich and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany) to the Soft Matter Editorial Board. Jan’s research focusses on the study of colloidal systems. He aims to understand the macroscopic, non-equilibrium phenomena that colloid systems exhibit, both with and without external fields such as shear flow, electric fields and confinement; on a microscopic basis. To achieve this he synthesises colloidal dispersions with appropriate and tailored properties and uses a variety of optical and mechanical techniques to probe structure, dynamics and kinetics on a microscopic scale. Jan is currently both a director at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Professor of Physics at the University of Düsseldorf. He has made a significant contribution to the field and to the journal and we are delighted to have him join the Soft Matter team!

To find out more about Jan’s research, take a look at his recent papers:

Thermophoresis of charged colloidal rods
Zilin Wang, Hartmut Kriegs, Johan Buitenhuis, Jan K. G. Dhont and Simone Wiegand

Near-wall dynamics of concentrated hard-sphere suspensions: comparison of evanescent wave DLS experiments, virial approximation and simulations
Yi Liu, Jerzy Bławzdziewicz, Bogdan Cichocki, Jan K. G. Dhont, Maciej Lisicki, Eligiusz Wajnryb, Y.-N. Young and Peter R. Lang

Flow instability due to coupling of shear-gradients with concentration: non-uniform flow of (hard-sphere) glasses
Howon Jin, Kyongok Kang, Kyung Hyun Ahn and  Jan K. G. Dhont

An electric-field induced dynamical state in dispersions of charged colloidal rods
Jan K. G. Dhont and Kyongok Kang

As a Soft Matter Associate Editor, Jan will be handling submissions to the journal. Why not submit your next paper to his Editorial Office?

We are delighted that Professor Kathleen Stebe has joined the Soft Matter Editorial Board as an Associate Editor.

We are delighted to welcome Jennifer A. Lewis to the Soft Matter Editorial Board.

Jennifer Lewis is a Professor at Harvard University. She joined the faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard in 2013. Prior to her appointment at Harvard, she served as the Hans Thurnauer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the Director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Her research group focuses on the directed assembly of soft functional materials. Her work has resulted in 8 patents and 125 papers to date.  She recently co-founded Electroninks Inc., a company focused on commercializing conductive inks for printed electronics, and Voxel8, Inc., which is focused on 3D printing of functional materials.   
  
Professor Lewis is the recipient of the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow Award (1994), the Brunaeur Award from the American Ceramic Society (2003), the Langmuir Lecture Award from the American Chemical Society (2009), and the MRS Medal Award (2012).  She is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society (2005), the American Physical Society (2007), the Materials Research Society (2011), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012).

Welcome aboard, Jennifer!

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We are delighted to welcome Peter Schurtenberger to the Soft Matter Editorial Board.

Peter Schurtenberger is currently a professor at the Division of Physical Chemistry, Lund University, Sweden. His research interests focus on colloidal soft matter, nanotechnology, biophysics, materials sciences and food technology, on the characterization of soft matter with scattering methods and on the development of new instruments for this task.

Schurtenberger received his PhD in physics from ETH Zurich in 1984, worked as a postdoc at Lund University and MIT, and as a senior researcher at the Department of Materials of ETHZ. In 1999 he was appointed as the chair in experimental physics at the University of Fribourg, where he became the founding director of the Adolphe Merkle Institute and received a chair in Experimental Physics and Nanoscience in 2008. He moved to Lund University at the end of 2010.

His recent publications include:

Fluid–solid transitions in soft-repulsive colloids
Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 3000-3004

Hybrid raspberry microgels with tunable thermoresponsive behavior
Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 2798-2802

Deformable particles with anisotropic interactions: unusual field-induced structural transitions in ultrasoft ionic microgel colloids
Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 10819-10822

Preparation and characterization of ellipsoidal-shaped thermosensitive microgel colloids with tailored aspect ratios
Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 3538-3548

We are very pleased to announce that the new Chairman for Soft Matter is Michael Rubinstein.

Michael Rubinstein received a B.S. with honors in physics from Caltech in 1979, M.A. in 1980, and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1983 specializing in soft condensed matter theory in the group of D. R. Nelson. Between 1983 and 1985 Michael was a post-doctoral fellow with E. Helfand at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ where he started his research in polymer physics. In 1985 Michael joined Research Laboratories of Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, NY where he worked for 10 years in different areas of polymer theory.

In 1987 he received C.E.K. Mees Award “In Recognition of Excellence in Scientific Research and Reporting”, and in 1994 he was Juliot Curie Visiting Professor at Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris. In 1995 Michael moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he is currently a John P. Barker Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Curriculum of Applied Sciences and Engineering as well as a member of the Program in Molecular and Cellular Biophysics and of the Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology.

In 1998 he was Visiting Professor at College de France and in 2013 he was awarded Michelin Science Chair at ESPCI.  In 2001 Michael was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. From 2001 through 2004 he was an Associate Editor of Macromolecules. In 2003 he published a textbook “Polymer Physics” with R. H. Colby. In 2004 he was a co-chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Macromolecular, Colloidal and Polyelectrolyte Solutions, and in 2008-2009 he was a Chair of the Division of Polymer Physics of the American Physical Society. In 2010 Michael received the Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society.

Michael’s research interests are in the area of theoretical soft condensed matter physics with an emphasis on polymer physics. His main scientific contributions include theories of polymer entanglements, dynamics of reversible networks, and models of charged polymers. His recent scientific interests are in applications of polymer physics to biological systems, such as airway surface layer of a lung and development of molecular models of polymer gels and networks including those with self-healing properties.