Soft Matter Blog

Do you know an early-career researcher who deserves recognition for their contribution to the soft matter field?

Soft Matter is pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for its 2025 Lectureship award and will close on 30th April 2025. This annual award was established in 2009 to honour an early-stage career scientist who has made a significant contribution to the soft matter field.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the lectureship, candidates should meet the following criteria:

• Be an independent researcher, PhD students postdoctoral research associates are not eligible
• Be actively pursuing research within the soft matter field, and have made a significant contribution to the field
• Be at an early stage of their independent career (this should typically be within 12 years of attaining their doctorate or equivalent degree, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break, work in systems where their time period to independence may vary or who followed an alternative study path)

How to nominate

Nominations must be made via email to softmatter-rsc@rsc.org, and include the following:

• The name, affiliation and contact details of the nominee, nominator and referee
• An up-to-date CV of the nominee (1-3 A4 page maximum length)
• A letter of recommendation from the nominator (500 words maximum length). The relationship between nominator and nominee should be stated in the letter.
• A supporting letter of recommendation from a referee (500 words maximum length). This could be from the nominee’s academic mentor, PhD supervisor or postdoc for instance. The relationship between referee and nominee should be stated in the letter.
• The nominator must confirm that to the best of their knowledge, their nominee’s professional standing is as such that there is no confirmed or potential impediment to them receiving the Lectureship

Please note:

• Self-nomination is not permitted
• The nominee must be aware that he/she has been nominated for this lectureship
• Previous winners and current Soft Matter Editorial Board members are not eligible
• As part of the Royal Society of Chemistry, we have a responsibility to promote inclusivity and accessibility in order to improve diversity. Where possible, we encourage each nominator to consider nominating candidates of all genders, races, and backgrounds. Please see the RSC’s approach to Inclusion and Diversity.

Selection

• All eligible nominated candidates will be assessed by a judging panel made up of the Soft Matter Editorial Board, any Editorial Board members with a conflict of interest will be ineligible for the judging panel.
• The judging panel will consider the following core criteria:
  • Excellence in research, as evidenced in reference to originality and impact
  • Quality of publications, patents or software
  • Innovation
  • Professional standing
  • Independence
  • Collaborations and teamwork
  • Evidence of promising potential
  • Other indicators of esteem indicated by the nominator
• In any instance where multiple nominees are judged to be equally meritorious in relation to these core criteria, the judging panel will use information provided on the nominee’s broader contribution to the chemistry community as an additional criterion. Examples of this could include: involvement with RSC community activities, teaching or demonstrating, effective mentorship, service on boards, committees or panels, leadership in the scientific community, peer reviewing, promotion of diversity and inclusion, advocacy for chemistry, public engagement and outreach.

Previous winners

2024 – Sujit Datta, Caltech, USA

2023 – Qian Chen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Andela Saric, Institute of Science and Technology, Austria

2022 – Xuanhe Zhao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

2021 – Silvia Marchesan, University of Trieste, Italy

2020 – Valeria Garbin, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

2019 – Timothy J White, University of Colorado, USA

2018 – Susan Perkin, University of Oxford, UK

2017 – Daeyeon Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA

2016 – Damien Baigl, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

2015 – Lucio Isa, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

2014 – Eric Dufresne, Yale University, USA

2013 – Eric Furst, University of Delaware, USA

2012 – Patrick Doyle, MIT, USA

2011 – Michael J. Solomon, University of Michigan, USA

2010 – Bartosz Grzybowski, UNIST, Republic of Korea

2009 – Emanuela Zaccarelli, University of Rome, Italy

Nominations deadline: 30 April 2025

It is with great pleasure that we announce Sujit Datta (Caltech) as the recipient of the 2024 Soft Matter lectureship.

This award honours an early-career researcher who has made significant contribution to the soft matter research field. The recipient is selected by the Soft Matter Editorial Board from a list of candidates nominated by the community.

Sujit Datta is a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biophysics at Caltech, where he moved in 2024 from Princeton University. He received a BA in Mathematics and Physics and an MS in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. He then moved to Harvard, where he studied fluid dynamics and instabilities in soft and disordered media with Dave Weitz and obtained his PhD in Physics in 2013. Sujit’s postdoctoral training was in Chemical Engineering at Caltech, where he studied the biophysics of the gut with Rustem Ismagilov. He then started his faculty career at Princeton in 2017, and was promoted to Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Chemical & Biological Engineering in 2023. He also co-led the Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) on Living & Soft Matter of the Princeton Materials Research Science and Engineering Center from 2022-2024.

Sujit’s research is in the study of transport processes, which aims to predict and control the movement of physical entities such as molecules and cells. In particular, motivated by challenges in biotechnology, energy, medicine, and sustainability, his research group studies the transport of soft (“squishy”) and living systems—e.g., “complex” fluids, gels, and multicellular bacterial populations—through complex environments ranging from soils, sediments, and porous rocks to gels and tissues in our bodies. Sujit and his group have pioneered experimental techniques—combining microscopy, microfluidics, materials science, and biophysical characterization—to directly visualize such transport processes in model complex environments with systematically-tunable properties in the lab. He has thereby established a way to bridge the gap between idealized lab studies in uniform environments and complex processes in real-world settings. By integrating such experiments with theoretical/computational modeling, applying ideas from fluid and solid mechanics, biological physics, chemical dynamics, colloidal science, polymer physics, statistical mechanics, and network science, Sujit and his group have revealed and shed new light on the fascinating behaviors manifested by complex fluids and bacterial populations in complex environments, guiding the development of new approaches to biotechnology, environmental remediation, flow chemistry, and sustainability.

Sujit also actively leads outreach efforts in STEM to bring together diverse perspectives and provide access to researchers from traditionally under-represented groups in studies of soft and living systems. In addition to leading professional activities for a number of scientific societies and agencies, he serves on the editorial boards of Annual Reviews of Condensed Matter Physics and the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.

Sujit’s scholarship has been recognized by awards from a broad range of different communities, reflecting its multidisciplinary nature, including the Allan P. Colburn and 35 Under 35 Awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, three awards from the American Physical Society (Early Career Award in Biological Physics, Andreas Acrivos Award in Fluid Dynamics, and Apker Award), Pew Biomedical Scholar Award, Arthur Metzner Award of the Society of Rheology, Unilever Award of the American Chemical Society, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, NSF CAREER Award, and multiple commendations for teaching (including being described as “the most caring and engaging professor I have met at the entire university”).

Sujit grew up in Toronto, but lost most of his Canadian accent by living in Abu Dhabi, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, and New Jersey. In his free time, Sujit likes to play with his five-year-old daughter, cook, eat, run, and reminisce about his past life as a competitive kickboxer.

Find out more about Sujit and his research in our interview below!

How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

I was lucky to have the opportunity to start my research career as an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, where I worked in the lab of Prof. Charlie Johnson and published my first papers on the physics of carbon nanomaterials. I transitioned to soft matter physics as a PhD student at Harvard, where I studied multiphase flow through porous media and the mechanics of soft shells in the lab of Prof. Dave Weitz. When I wrapped up graduate school, I knew there remained unaddressed and interesting questions relating to my PhD work that I wanted to revisit one day — and indeed, my group has run with those and taken them in new directions.

However, for my postdoctoral work, I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and work in new areas that I knew nothing about. I was particularly intrigued by microbial processes in the gut, given their pivotal importance to our health, and given that the gut is a dynamic, rheologically- and physicochemically-complex, soft matter environment. So, as a postdoc at Caltech, I switched fields and studied the biochemical and biophysical properties of mucus and microbes in the gut in the lab of Prof. Rustem Ismagilov. I went from doing microfluidics experiments to cutting open mice—quite a change! This experience convinced me that the ideas and tools of soft matter can provide powerful insights into the behavior of living systems, and exposed me to a range of fascinating questions at the interface of soft matter and biology, particularly in the context of microbial processes, that also underlie some of my group’s current research.

So, my research has evolved quite considerably from my first article on carbon nanomaterials! I am grateful to have been able to work across diverse areas of scientific research—going from nanoscience, to complex fluid dynamics and soft mechanics, to biological physics. Drawing on all these diverse experiences, today, my research group combines microscopy, microfluidics, materials science, and biophysical characterization with theoretical/computational modeling, applying ideas from fluid and solid mechanics, biological physics, chemical dynamics, colloidal science, polymer physics, statistical mechanics, and network science to study the transport of diverse soft and living systems through complex environments.

What excites you most about your area of research and what has been the most exciting moment of your career so far?

One of the most exciting characteristics of the research that we do is how inherently cross-disciplinary it is.  Our work necessarily uses techniques and principles from biology, chemistry, engineering, materials science, math, and physics to draw connections across disciplines and make discoveries that probably couldn’t have otherwise been made. As a result, I’m constantly being challenged and learning new things from across a range of fields, which is fun. Also, due to their complexity, the soft & living systems that we study consistently surprise us; they exhibit phenomena that we could have never expected a priori, and it’s fun to do the scientific detective work in figuring out why. As the saying goes: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known”. Soft matter is full of incredible things that are waiting to be known.

For example, in a recent study we found that bacterial colonies unexpectedly grow in unusual “cable”-like shapes in polymeric fluids, like mucus in the body. But we pushed ourselves to go beyond simply making this observation, and were able to decipher why this phenomenon happens using concepts from colloidal science and polymer physics. It was a gratifying example of how soft matter thinking can help shed light in biology. In turn, while the behavior of passive particulates in polymeric fluids is well-studied in soft matter, bacteria are in many ways like particulates that can also actively proliferate—a feature that engenders fascinating new effects (like the formation of cables) that motivate new directions for research in soft matter.

It’s impossible for me to pick a singular most exciting moment of my career; there are too many! My group and I have been lucky to have had many ‘eureka’ experiences in many different soft & living systems—such as discovering cables as described above, showing that polymer solutions can exhibit chaotic flows in porous media, discovering that bacteria moving through crowded spaces can be thought of as active particles navigating disordered free energy landscapes, and many more.

But ultimately, the most exciting moments for me are when the students and postdocs who make these discoveries grow as researchers and individuals and move on from the lab to even bigger things. For example, I was ecstatic when I found out that my first postdoc (who went on to a faculty position after leaving my group) won the NSF CAREER award; I think I celebrated more than when I won the award myself! Another example is when I once gave a seminar at Stanford; three students who had been undergraduate researchers in my lab, and then went on to graduate school at Stanford, showed up to my seminar with a giant banner and cutout of my head and acted as my cheering squad! It’s truly gratifying to help the people I have the privilege of mentoring realize their immense potential, continue to do great things in the world, and achieve success—by whatever metric of success they have—beyond their wildest dreams.

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

I certainly can’t claim to know the most important questions in my field! (And don’t know if such a thing as “most important” even exists.) But there are countless questions that I think are important and interesting, and that keep me up at night.

Many of them follow in the spirit of Philip Anderson’s classic 1972 essay ‘More is different’, in which he beautifully articulates how in complex systems “at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear”. If the whole is “not only more than but very different from the sum of its parts”, what is the right way to understand the different phenomena that emerge at different levels of complexity in multicomponent and disordered soft & living systems? What is the appropriate level of coarse graining required at these different levels such that one can distill the essential principles underlying these emergent phenomena and make quantitative predictions, but in as simple and elegant a way as possible?

Fascinating variants of these questions emerge for different soft & living systems, and continue to represent an important challenge for our field. One example is the seemingly-simple case of a viscoelastic polymer solution flowing through a porous medium—a process that is critical in many chemical, energy, and environmental settings. For a solution of a given composition and a medium of a given structure, what is the relationship between the flow rate of the solution and the pressure drop across the medium? Predicting this relationship, or even identifying what the essential ingredients are, remains an outstanding challenge—even though it is one of the most fundamental descriptors of the flow! The reason it is challenging is because this is a multiscale problem with strong couplings across scales: fluid flow through the tortuous pores (at the scale of microns) deforms polymers (at the scale of nanometers), which in turn feeds back on the flow and alters it over a broad range of scales (from nanometers to millimeters), ultimately changing macroscopic transport behavior in media that can range from millimeters to meters in size. Addressing this challenge is not just fundamentally interesting in studies of complex fluids, but is practically important in helping to formulate the right fluid and identify the right operating conditions for a given application.

Another example relates to mixed microbial communities, in which multiple different cell types self-organize into spatially structured subgroups. For a community with a given composition, in a given environment, how will the different cell types spatially organize themselves? How does one predict and control this intricate organization and its influence on community functioning? Again, this is an outstanding challenge because of the multiscale nature of the problem: the physicochemical and metabolic properties of individual cells (at the scale of nanometers to microns) are influenced by, and in turn influence, each other and their environments (over scales ranging from nanometers to millimeters), ultimately influencing spatial structure and biological function in multicellular collectives over scales as large as centimeters. Addressing this challenge is not just fundamentally interesting in biology, but is practically important to manipulate microbial communities for beneficial health or biotechnological applications.

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

Soft Matter is one of my favorite journals to read for a key reason. As I described in #2 above, the field of soft matter inherently cuts across traditional disciplines—drawing on techniques and principles from biology, chemistry, engineering, materials science, math, and physics to make discoveries that have impact across these disciplines. Consequently, while exciting, this cross-disciplinarity also makes it more challenging to publish soft matter research in journals that are more constrained by traditional disciplinary boundaries. The journal Soft Matter nicely addresses this challenge by transcending these boundaries. The readership is not just primarily biologists, or chemists, or physicists or so on; it is everyone.

Which of your Soft Matter publications are you most proud of and why?

It’s impossible to single one out; we only want to put out our best, highest-quality work, so my group and I devote considerable care, time, and energy to each paper we publish!

However, for the sake of addressing this question, I will deflect and instead of mentioning a paper from my group, I will highlight a recent perspective article I co-authored with 26(!) other people entitled “Soft matter physics of the ground beneath our feet”. This article emerged from a workshop I co-organized with Ian Bourg, Ching-Yao Lai, and Howard Stone at Princeton in 2022. Our goal was simple: given that the ground beneath our feet is not static, but is a continually-changing, deformable, disordered combination of soft materials, we wanted to bring together participants from diverse backgrounds to discuss problems at the interface of soft matter and geoscience and clarify unifying/open questions for future research to address. The discussions were so lively, and the opportunities for new research so vast, that many of the speakers and participants came together to articulate their ideas in this perspective article. It is a patchwork that necessarily reflects the different perspectives of the many different co-authors, and so may feel disjointed to some readers. But in doing so, I think it nicely highlights many of the opportunities for soft matter scientists to uniquely address problems in geosciences, and in turn, highlights how processes in the Earth’s surface present new problems to address in soft matter.

In which upcoming conferences or events (online or in person) may our readers meet you?

I make sure to attend the American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting, fall meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and fall meeting of the Society of Rheology (SoR) every year.

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

Something I’ve had to learn (and am still learning) the hard way is the principle of “conservation of energy/time”. We all work hard and try do our best, highest-quality work in everything we do. Unfortunately, however, there are too many things to do in this job, and only a fixed amount of energy/time that each of us has in a day. As a result, it’s important to prioritize things carefully: by spending more energy/time on one task, you are necessarily taking away energy/time from another, even if you don’t mean to. So, I find it useful to try to devote more energy/time to the tasks that are of higher priority to me—focusing on the things where I believe I can make the biggest impact, and that spark the most joy for me, and trying to not worry too much about the rest.

How do you spend your spare time?

When I’m not working, chances are that I’m either spending time with my five-year old daughter, running, or cooking or eating.

My daughter is my favorite person. She’s funny and smart and constantly keeps me on my toes. So, we have a lot of fun together going off on all sorts of adventures.

First thing in the morning, I run and work out. I find it meditative, and it equilibrates me. As Murakami wrote: “Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running.”

And then I love food. I enjoy explore different cuisines, and then bringing back memories of things I’ve eaten to experiment in the kitchen. It’s a different, and delicious, way to channel my creative juices.

To learn more about Sujit’s research, have a look at some of his recent publications in Soft Matter, these are FREE to access until 30 November. You can also check out articles from our previous lectureship winners in our lectureship winners collection.

Scaling laws to predict humidity-induced swelling and stiffness in hydrogels

Yiwei Gao, Nicholas K. K. Chai, Negin Garakani, Sujit S. Datta and H. Jeremy Cho

Soft Matter, 2021, 17, 9893-9900, DOI: 10.1039/D1SM01186C

Poroelastic shape relaxation of hydrogel particles

Jean- François Louf and Sujit S. Datta

Soft Matter, 2021, 17, 3840-3847, DOI: 10.1039/D0SM02243H

Obstructed swelling and fracture of hydrogels

Abigail Plummer, Caroline Adkins, Jean-François Louf, Andrej Košmrlj and Sujit S. Datta

Soft Matter, 2024, 20, 1425-1437, DOI: 10.1039/D3SM01470C

Influence of bacterial swimming and hydrodynamics on attachment of phages

Christoph Lohrmann, Christian Holm and Sujit S. Datta

Soft Matter, 2024, 20, 4795-4805, DOI: 10.1039/D4SM00060A

We would like to thank everybody who nominated a candidate for the 2024 Soft Matter Lectureship. The Editorial Board had a very difficult task in choosing a winner from the many excellent and worthy candidates.

Please join us in congratulating Sujit on winning this award!

Do you know an early-career researcher who deserves recognition for their contribution to the soft matter field?

Soft Matter is pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for its 2023 Lectureship award and will close on 28 February 2023. This annual award was established in 2009 to honour an early-stage career scientist who has made a significant contribution to the soft matter field.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the lectureship, candidates should meet the following criteria:

• Be an independent researcher, PhD students postdoctoral research associates are not eligible
• Be actively pursuing research within the soft matter field, and have made a significant contribution to the field
• Be at an early stage of their independent career (this should typically be within 12 years of attaining their doctorate or equivalent degree, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break, work in systems where their time period to independence may vary or who followed an alternative study path)

How to nominate

Nominations must be made via email to softmatter-rsc@rsc.org, and include the following:

• The name, affiliation and contact details of the nominee, nominator and referee
• An up-to-date CV of the nominee (1-3 A4 page maximum length)
• A letter of recommendation from the nominator (500 words maximum length). The relationship between nominator and nominee should be stated in the letter.
• A supporting letter of recommendation from a referee (500 words maximum length). This could be from the nominee’s academic mentor, PhD supervisor or postdoc for instance. The relationship between referee and nominee should be stated in the letter.
• The nominator must confirm that to the best of their knowledge, their nominee’s professional standing is as such that there is no confirmed or potential impediment to them receiving the Lectureship

Please note:

• Self-nomination is not permitted
• The nominee must be aware that he/she has been nominated for this lectureship
• Previous winners and current Soft Matter Editorial Board members are not eligible
• As part of the Royal Society of Chemistry, we have a responsibility to promote inclusivity and accessibility in order to improve diversity. Where possible, we encourage each nominator to consider nominating candidates of all genders, races, and backgrounds. Please see the RSC’s approach to Inclusion and Diversity.

Selection

• All eligible nominated candidates will be assessed by a judging panel made up of the Soft Matter Editorial Board, any Editorial Board members with a conflict of interest will be ineligible for the judging panel.
• The judging panel will consider the following core criteria:
  • Excellence in research, as evidenced in reference to originality and impact
  • Quality of publications, patents or software
  • Innovation
  • Professional standing
  • Independence
  • Collaborations and teamwork
  • Evidence of promising potential
  • Other indicators of esteem indicated by the nominator
• In any instance where multiple nominees are judged to be equally meritorious in relation to these core criteria, the judging panel will use information provided on the nominee’s broader contribution to the chemistry community as an additional criterion. Examples of this could include: involvement with RSC community activities, teaching or demonstrating, effective mentorship, service on boards, committees or panels, leadership in the scientific community, peer reviewing, promotion of diversity and inclusion, advocacy for chemistry, public engagement and outreach.

Previous winners

2022 – Xuanhe Zhao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

2021 – Silvia Marchesan, University of Trieste, Italy

2020 – Valeria Garbin, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

2019 – Timothy J White, University of Colorado, USA

2018 – Susan Perkin, University of Oxford, UK

2017 – Daeyeon Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA

2016 – Damien Baigl, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

2015 – Lucio Isa, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

2014 – Eric Dufresne, Yale University, USA

2013 – Eric Furst, University of Delaware, USA

2012 – Patrick Doyle, MIT, USA

2011 – Michael J. Solomon, University of Michigan, USA

2010 – Bartosz Grzybowski, UNIST, Republic of Korea

2009 – Emanuela Zaccarelli, University of Rome, Italy

Nominations deadline: 28 February 2023

It is with great pleasure that we announce Xuanhe Zhao (MIT) as the recipient of the 2022 Soft Matter lectureship.

This award, now in its fourteenth year, honours an early-career researcher who has made significant contribution to the biomaterials field. The recipient is selected by the Soft Matter Editorial Board from a list of candidates nominated by the community.

Xuanhe Zhao is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. The mission of Zhao Lab is to advance science and technology on the interfaces between humans and machines for addressing grand societal challenges in health and sustainability. A major focus of Zhao Lab’s current research is the study and development of soft materials and systems. Dr. Zhao is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, SES Young Investigator Medal, ASME Hughes Young Investigator Award, Adhesion Society’s Young Scientist Award, Materials Today Rising Star Award, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher. Six patents from Zhao Lab have been licensed by established and start-up companies and contributed to widely used medical devices such as hydrogel-elastomer tissue phantoms.

To learn more about Xuanhe’s research have a look at some of his recent publications in Soft Matter, these are FREE to access until 15 August. You can also check out articles from our previous lectureship winners in our lectureship winners collection.

An extreme toughening mechanism for soft materials

Shaoting Lin, Camilo Duque Londono, Dongchang Zheng and Xuanhe Zhao

Soft Matter, 2022, DOI: 10.1039/D2SM00609J

Ideal reversible polymer networks

German Alberto Parada and Xuanhe Zhao

Soft Matter, 2018, 14, 5186-5196

Kirigami enhances film adhesion

Ruike Zhao, Shaoting Lin, Hyunwoo Yuk and Xuanhe Zhao

Soft Matter, 2018, 14, 2515-2525

Avoiding the pull-in instability of a dielectric elastomer film and the potential for increased actuation and energy harvesting

Shengyou Yang, Xuanhe Zhao and Pradeep Sharma

Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 4552-4558

We would like to thank everybody who nominated a candidate for the 2022 Soft Matter Lectureship. The Editorial Board had a very difficult task in choosing a winner from the many excellent and worthy candidates.

Please join us in congratulating Xuanhe on winning this award!

Do you know an early-career researcher who deserves recognition for their contribution to the soft matter field?

Soft Matter is pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for its 2022 Lectureship award and will close on 31 December 2021. This annual award was established in 2009 to honour an early-stage career scientist who has made a significant contribution to the soft matter field.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the lectureship, candidates should meet the following criteria:

• Be an independent researcher, PhD students postdoctoral research associates are not eligible
• Be actively pursuing research within the soft matter field, and have made a significant contribution to the field
• Be at an early stage of their independent career (this should typically be within 12 years of attaining their doctorate or equivalent degree, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break, work in systems where their time period to independence may vary or who followed an alternative study path)

How to nominate

Nominations must be made via email to softmatter-rsc@rsc.org, and include the following:

• The name, affiliation and contact details of the nominee, nominator and referee
• An up-to-date CV of the nominee (1-3 A4 page maximum length)
• A letter of recommendation from the nominator (500 words maximum length)
• A supporting letter of recommendation from a referee (500 words maximum length). This could be from the nominee’s postdoc, PhD supervisor or academic mentor for instance
• The nominator must confirm that to the best of their knowledge, their nominee’s professional standing is as such that there is no confirmed or potential impediment to them receiving the Lectureship

Please note:

• Self-nomination is not permitted
• The nominee must be aware that he/she has been nominated for this lectureship
• Previous winners and current Soft Matter Editorial Board members are not eligible
• As part of the Royal Society of Chemistry, we have a responsibility to promote inclusivity and accessibility in order to improve diversity. Where possible, we encourage each nominator to consider nominating candidates of all genders, races, and backgrounds. Please see the RSC’s approach to Inclusion and Diversity.

Selection

• All eligible nominated candidates will be assessed by a judging panel made up of the Soft Matter Editorial Board, any Editorial Board members with a conflict of interest will be ineligible for the judging panel.
• The judging panel will consider the following core criteria:
  • Excellence in research, as evidenced in reference to originality and impact
  • Quality of publications, patents or software
  • Innovation
  • Professional standing
  • Independence
  • Collaborations and teamwork
  • Evidence of promising potential
  • Other indicators of esteem indicated by the nominator
• In any instance where multiple nominees are judged to be equally meritorious in relation to these core criteria, the judging panel will use information provided on the nominee’s broader contribution to the chemistry community as an additional criterion. Examples of this could include: involvement with RSC community activities, teaching or demonstrating, effective mentorship, service on boards, committees or panels, leadership in the scientific community, peer reviewing, promotion of diversity and inclusion, advocacy for chemistry, public engagement and outreach.

Previous winners

2021 – Silvia Marchesan, University of Trieste, Italy

2020 – Valeria Garbin, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

2019 – Timothy J White, University of Colorado, USA

2018 – Susan Perkin, University of Oxford, UK

2017 – Daeyeon Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA

2016 – Damien Baigl, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

2015 – Lucio Isa, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

2014 – Eric Dufresne, Yale University, USA

2013 – Eric Furst, University of Delaware, USA

2012 – Patrick Doyle, MIT, USA

2011 – Michael J. Solomon, University of Michigan, USA

2010 – Bartosz Grzybowski, UNIST, Republic of Korea

2009 – Emanuela Zaccarelli, University of Rome, Italy

Nominations deadline: 31 December 2021

It is with great pleasure that we announce Prof Silvia Marchesan (University of Trieste) as the recipient of the 2021 Soft Matter lectureship.

This award, now in its thirteenth year, honours an early-career researcher who has made significant contribution to the soft matter field. The recipient is selected by the Soft Matter Editorial Board from a list of candidates nominated by the community.

Silvia completed her PhD in Chemistry at The University of Edinburgh in 2008 and did her postdoc research at the University of Helsinki (Finland), then at Monash University in a joint position with Australia’s national science agency (CSIRO). In 2013 she returned to Italy and secured a tenure-track academic position in 2015 at the University of Trieste, where she started to work on nanostructured materials as PI thanks to a starting grant by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research. In 2018 she became associate professor and obtained the national Habilitation as full professor in organic chemistry. She was featured amongst the 11 Rising Stars profiles in the natural sciences by Nature Index in 2018 for her multidisciplinary research that spans across chemistry, biophysics, nanotechnology and materials science.

Silvia leads the SuperStructures group and can be found on Twitter @MarchesanLab. She is interested in the control over the self-organization of molecules into superstructures that span over a sizescale that goes well beyond that of the single components. Her group’s main activities focus on the use of both D- and L- amino acids to form short heterochiral peptides that self-organize into different architectures. Their favourite systems are in water and they can be in the form of biomaterials (hydrogels), or nanostructures, for biological applications and they also also enjoy working on carbon nanomaterials (CNT, graphene, nanohorns, etc.) that they covalently functionalize to exert control over their properties, in this case both for energy or biological applications.

Read Silvia’s latest article in Soft Matter “Supramolecular hydrogels from unprotected dipeptides: a comparative study on stereoisomers and structural isomers” which was in our peptide soft materials collection for FREE until 1 August. Also check out articles from our previous lectureship winners in our lectureship lectureship winners collection.

How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

In my first article as corresponding author, it was all about data interpretation, yet many questions were left unaswered. Over the years, the transition has been towards understanding the exact reasons behind unexpected observations, and identifying design rules for self-assembling minimalistic systems that gel and exert various functions (e.g. catalysis, drug delivery, amyloid fibril inhibition, etc.). On the journey, I have encountered great scientists, some of which have become collaborators from different disciplines that complement our skills and with whom we engage in stimulating discussions and learn something new every day!

What excites you most about your area of research and what has been the most exciting moment of your career so far?

What I love about our research on soft matter is that, especially in the case of supramolecular hydrogels, we can monitor the “dance” of molecules as they interact across size scales, using diverse techniques at the molecular, nano-, micro-, up to the macroscale, and we can actually see by eye the net outcome of the assembly process. It is stupefying to visually observe changes in a vial and understand the process that brings molecules together into a nanostructured, yet macroscopic, material.

The most exciting moment came after a long series of grant rejections, as I started to think of plan B, outside of academia, and wrapped up the scientific passion project that was keeping me awake at night, in what I thought was going to be the last proposal. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I discovered that it got funded with a starting package from the Italian Ministry of Research (MIUR). That was a game-changer and I remember standing in awe in front of the lab door with the name “Superstructures Lab”, thinking that finally I could realise the science that, until then, I could only dream of.

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

I think there’s still a knowledge gap at the mesoscale. We understand well how to design and control molecules and nanostructures on one hand, and macroscopic materials on the other. However, sometimes a link goes missing in the middle, and geometrical errors accumulate in the process of structure amplification until it stops at the microscale, or it fails before then. I think that understanding and controlling how this happens, and how multiple components can exert orthogonal functions in complex systems, will open the way to a qualitative leap in the field. We are working very hard to uncover general design rules to go all the way from simple molecules to supramolecular materials, and peptides’ diversity renders the task an exciting challenge.

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

Our work is at the interface of chemistry, biophysics, nanotechnology, and materials science. Most journals focus on one discipline or another, while Soft Matter readers are the perfect audience for mutlidisciplinary research of this type. The RSC publishing platform is very simple to use, and we experienced short peer-review times and constructive feedback that ultimately allowed us to grow as scientists and it enhanced the quality of our work.

In which upcoming conferences or events (online or in person) may our readers meet you?

In 2021, I’ll be at the “Design and Function of Stimuli Responsive Nanocomposites” Symposium at UCD, at the ACS Fall Meeting, the EMBO Workshop on Designing Functional Biomolecular Assemblies, and I’ll close the year in Caparica (Portugal) with the Conference on Translational Chemistry (IC3TC).

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

Find an inspiring environment and mentor to help you find your path, do the science that makes you dream of it, engage with the community at large, professional and local (schools, public). The more you practise discussing science the clearer and better your ideas become.

How do you spend your spare time?

I wish I had spare time! I love rock concerts, art exhibitions, and going for hikes in dramatic landscapes. I am very fortunate that Italy on this front has lots to offer, and Trieste in particular, as it is a gem nested between the Alps and the Mediterranean, with the bonus of a synchrotron in between! Scientists are always welcome to visit us!

We would like to thank everybody who nominated a candidate for the 2021 Soft Matter Lectureship. The Editorial Board had a very difficult task in choosing a winner from the many excellent and worthy candidates.

Please join us in congratulating Silvia on winning this award!

Do you know an early-career researcher who deserves recognition for their contribution to the soft matter field?

Now is your chance to put them forward for the accolade they deserve!

Soft Matter is pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for its 2021 Lectureship award. This annual award was established in 2009 to honour an early-stage career scientist who has made a significant contribution to the soft matter field.

The recipient of the award will be asked to present a lecture at an international conference in 2021, where they will also be presented with the award. The Soft Matter Editorial Office will provide £1000 financial support to the recipient for travel and accommodation costs.

The recipient will also be asked to contribute a research article to the journal and will have their work showcased free of charge on the front cover of the issue in which their article is published. The article would be subject to the normal peer review standards of the journal.

Previous winners

2020 – Valeria Garbin, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

2019 – Timothy J White, University of Colorado, USA

2018 – Susan Perkin, University of Oxford, UK

2017 – Daeyeon Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA

2016 – Damien Baigl, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

2015 – Lucio Isa, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

2014 – Eric Dufresne, Yale University, USA

2013 – Eric Furst, University of Delaware, USA

2012 – Patrick Doyle, MIT, USA

2011 – Michael J. Solomon, University of Michigan, USA

2010 – Bartosz Grzybowski, UNIST, Republic of Korea

2009 – Emanuela Zaccarelli, University of Rome, Italy

Eligibility

To be eligible for the lectureship, candidates should meet the following criteria:

• Be an independent researcher, having completed PhD and postdoctoral studies
• Be actively pursuing research within the soft matter field, and have made a significant contribution to the field
• Be at an early stage of their independent career (this should be within 12 years of attaining their doctorate or equivalent degree, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break or followed an alternative study path)

Although the Soft Matter Lectureship doesn’t explicitly reward support of or contributions to the journal, candidates with a history of publishing or reviewing for the journal would be more likely to be considered favourably.

Selection

• All eligible nominated candidates will be assessed by a shortlisting panel, made up of members of the Soft Matter Advisory Board and a previous lectureship winner.
• The shortlisting panel will consider the nomination form and letter of recommendation, as well as the three recent research articles highlighted in the nomination form for consideration.
• Shortlisted candidates will be further assessed by the Soft Matter Editorial Board, and a winner will be selected based on an anonymous poll.
• Selection is not based simply on quantitative measures. Consideration will be given to all information provided in the letter of recommendation and nomination form, including research achievements and originality, contributions to the soft matter community, innovation, collaborations and teamwork, publication history, and engagement with Soft Matter.

Nominations

Nominations must be made via email to softmatter-rsc@rsc.org, and include the following:

• A brief letter of recommendation (1 page maximum length)
• A complete nomination form (includes list of the candidate’s relevant publications or recent work, 3 research articles to be considered during the shortlisting process, candidate’s scientific CV, and full contact details)

Please note:

• Nominations from students and self-nomination is not permitted.
• The nominee must be aware that he/she has been nominated for this lectureship.
• As part of the Royal Society of Chemistry, we have a responsibility to promote inclusivity and accessibility in order to improve diversity. Where possible, we encourage each nominator to consider nominating candidates of all genders, races, and backgrounds. Please see the RSC’s approach to Inclusion and Diversity.
• Candidates outside of the stated eligibility criteria may still be considered.

Nominations deadline: 30^th November 2020

Download nomination form here

It is with great pleasure that we announce Dr Valeria Garbin (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands) as the recipient of the 2020 Soft Matter Lectureship.

Valeria Garbin studied Physics at the University of Padua and received her PhD from the University of Trieste in Italy. She was a Rubicon fellowship in the Physics of Fluids group at the University of Twente, and a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, before starting her research group at Imperial College London in 2012. She joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology in 2019.

Her current research focuses on soft materials under flow and deformation, particularly the extreme deformation conditions of cavitation, which are central to biomedical ultrasound and bioprocessing; and of processing flows used to create advanced materials and formulated products.

Valeria has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant, was the 2018 recipient of the McBain medal (RSC/SCI), and has been featured in “100 Women of Chemistry” by the RSC.

Learn more about Valeria’s research by reading her papers in Soft Matter:

Polymer nanocomposite capsules formed by droplet extraction: spontaneous stratification and tailored dissolution
Christiana E. Udoh, Valeria Garbin and João T. Cabral
Soft Matter, 2019, 15, 5287-5295

High-frequency linear rheology of hydrogels probed by ultrasound-driven microbubble dynamics
Akaki Jamburidze, Marco De Corato, Axel Huerre, Angelo Pommella and Valeria Garbin
Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 3946-3953

Shape oscillations of particle-coated bubbles and directional particle expulsion
Vincent Poulichet, Axel Huerre and Valeria Garbin
Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 125-133

Surface waves on a soft viscoelastic layer produced by an oscillating microbubble
Marc Tinguely, Matthew G. Hennessy, Angelo Pommella, Omar K. Matar and Valeria Garbin
Soft Matter, 2016, 12, 4247-4256

Near field capillary repulsion
Lu Yao, Lorenzo Botto, Marcello Cavallaro, Jr, Blake J. Bleier, Valeria Garbin and Kathleen J. Stebe
Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 779-786

These articles are free to read until 31 March 2020.

Thank you to everyone who nominated a candidate for the Lectureship; we received many excellent nominations, and the Editorial Board had a difficult task in choosing between some outstanding candidates.

Please join us in congratulating Valeria on winning this award!

Do you know an early-career researcher who deserves recognition for their contribution to the soft matter field?

Now is your chance to put them forward for the accolade they deserve!

Soft Matter is pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for the 2020 Soft Matter Lectureship award. This annual award was established in 2009 to honour an early-stage career scientist who has made a significant contribution to the soft matter field.

The recipient of the award will be asked to present a lecture at an international conference in 2020, where they will also be presented with the award. The Soft Matter Editorial Office will provide financial support to the recipient for travel and accommodation costs.

The recipient will also be asked to contribute a lead article to the journal and will have their work showcased free of charge on the front cover of the issue in which their article is published.

Prof Tim White receiving his Soft Matter Lectureship award from Professor Dimitris Vlassopoulos (left) and Laura Fisher (right)

Previous winners

2019 – Timothy J White, University of Colorado, USA

2018 – Susan Perkin, University of Oxford, UK

2017 – Daeyeon Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA

2016 – Damien Baigl, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

2015 – Lucio Isa, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

2014 – Eric Dufresne, Yale Univeristy, USA

2013 – Eric Furst, University of Delaware, USA

2012 – Patrick Doyle, MIT, USA

2011 – Michael J. Solomon, University of Michigan, USA

2010 – Bartosz Grzybowski, UNIST, Republic of Korea

2009 – Emanuela Zaccarelli, University of Rome, Italy

Eligibility

To be eligible for the lectureship, candidates should meet the following criteria:

• Be an independent researcher, having completed PhD and postdoctoral studies
• Be actively pursuing research within the soft matter field, and have made a significant contribution to the field
• Be at an early stage of their independent career (this should be within 12 years of attaining their doctorate or equivalent degree, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break or followed an alternative study path)

Although the Soft Matter Lectureship doesn’t explicitly reward support of or contributions to the journal, candidates with no history of either publishing in or refereeing for the journal would typically not be considered.

Selection

• Eligible nominated candidates will be notified of their nomination, and will be asked to provide 3 recent articles that they feel represent their current research.
• All eligible nominated candidates will be assessed by a shortlisting panel, made up of members of the Soft Matter Advisory Board and a previous lectureship winner.
• The shortlisting panel will consider the articles provided by the candidates as well as their CVs and letters of nomination.
• Shortlisted candidates will be further assessed by the Soft Matter Editorial Board, and a winner will be selected based on an anonymous poll.
• Selection is not based simply on quantitative measures. Consideration will be given to all information provided in the letter of recommendation and candidate CV, including research achievements and originality, contributions to the soft matter community, innovation, collaborations and teamwork, publication history, and engagement with Soft Matter.

Nominations

• Nominations must be made via email to softmatter-rsc@rsc.org, and should include a short CV (3 page maximum length) and a brief letter of nomination (1 page maximum length)
• Self-nomination is not permitted.
• Nominators do not need to be senior researchers, and we encourage nominations from people at all career levels.
• As part of the Royal Society of Chemistry, we believe we have a responsibility to promote inclusivity and accessibility in order to improve diversity. Where possible, we encourage each nominator to consider nominating candidates of all genders, races, and backgrounds.
• Candidates outside of the stated eligibility criteria may still be considered.

Nominations should be submitted no later than 30^th November 2019.

Professor Tim White gave the 2019 Soft Matter Lecture and was presented with his Award at the International Soft Matter Conference in Edinburgh, which took place from the 3rd – 7th June. Professor White’s lecture was on ‘Pixelated Polymers: Programming Function into Liquid Crystalline Polymer Networks and Elastomers’.

Prof Tim White receiving his Soft Matter Lectureship award from Associate Editor Professor Dimitris Vlassopoulos (left) and Deputy Editor Laura Fisher (right) (©Paul Maguire)

Professor Tim White presenting his lecture at the ISMC (©Paul Maguire)