Soft Matter Blog

This week’s issue of Soft Matter is our 2019 Emerging Investigators issue, which contains articles from soft matter researchers in the early stages of their independent careers and is accompanied by an Editorial from Editor-in-Chief Professor Darrin Pochan. To celebrate this issue we are delighted to feature the profile of Professor Anderson Shum, who published in our 2017 Emerging Investigators issue. Below, Anderson talks about his research journey, from student to Associate Professor, and his feelings towards Soft Matter!

 “I started my scientific career as a student working on photocatalysis of titanium in the summer at Technion after my high school, and assembly of surfactants onto metallic substrates during my undergraduate studies at Princeton. All of these helped cultivate a deep interest in topics relevant to Soft Matter. I was initially excited by soft matter areas because of the pretty microscopic pictures that you can see. Afterwards, I was intrigued by the set of tools that emerge, such as microfluidics, for manipulating soft matter systems. Recently, I am becoming more convinced how findings in soft matter can benefit a plethora of applications, ranging from food to biomedicine.

The journal, Soft Matter, addresses all of these interesting topics, and reports the latest discoveries and applications, always showcasing some fascinating pictures and explaining new science in an easy-to-understand manner. The articles often contain very illustrative figures and schematics that elucidate an otherwise difficult concept to understand. Soft Matter sets itself apart from many journals, as it can be a relaxing and enjoyable read. Currently, most, if not all, of my research hinges on some aspects of soft matter science, probably because of its ability to keep the interests of mine and my students’ high.“

Read Anderson’s Soft Matter papers below!

1. Coalescence of electrically charged liquid marbles Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 119-124 (Emerging Investigators 2017 Issue)

2. Partitioning-dependent conversion of polyelectrolyte assemblies in an aqueous two-phase system Soft Matter, 2018, 14, 1552-1558

3. Capillary micromechanics for core–shell particles Soft Matter, 2014, 10, 3271-3276

4. Engineering polymeric composite particles by emulsion-templating: thermodynamics versus kinetics Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 9780-9784

These articles are all  FREE to read and download until the 20^th March

Biography

Anderson Ho Cheung Shum received his B.S.E. degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University, S.M. and Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Programme in the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include microfluidics, microscaled fluid flows, emulsion-templated materials and soft matter.

 Anderson was a HK nominee for the 2017 APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE Prize), and an awardee for the Early Career Award by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong in 2012, HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2016-17, silver medal in 46th International Exhibition of Inventions (Geneva, Switzerland) in 2018 and IEEE Nanomed 2018 New Innovator in 2018. He was selected to join The Royal Society of Chemistry as a fellow in 2017 and The Young Academy of Science of Hong Kong as a founding member in 2018. He is a top 1% scholar by Clarivate Analytics’s Essential Science Indicators in 2018. He is an Associate Editor for Biomicrofluidics (American Institute of Physics (AIP), starting January 2019), Editorial Board member for Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) and an Editorial Advisory Board member for Lab-on-a-Chip (Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)).

This week’s issue of Soft Matter is our 2019 Emerging Investigators issue, which contains articles from soft matter researchers in the early stages of their independent careers and is accompanied by an Editorial from Editor-in-Chief Professor Darrin Pochan. In order to celebrate this issue, we are delighted to feature the profile of Professor LaShanda Korley, who published in our 2017 Emerging Investigators issue. Below, LaShanda discusses her research from the issue and how it fits into her overall research interests.

“Biomimicry is the underlying theme of my research program. We apply bio-inspired principles towards the design of responsive and mechanically-tunable polymeric systems.  This strategy is highly interdisciplinary, integrating many aspects of soft matter chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering.   Soft Matter is an ideal publication platform for this research, from the unique scope of the journal to the breadth of reviewer expertise. In the 2017 Emerging Investigator issue, hygromorphic, bilayer actuator composites inspired by seed pods were highlighted, combining concepts of interfacial assembly, transport, and manufacturing in active and passive soft components.¹ This fundamental investigation was translated to the design of hygromorphic materials with aligned, active elements for controlled actuation.² Other biomimetic avenues explored by my research team have also been published in Soft Matter, including peptide hybrid materials,³ templating in multilayered films⁴, and molecular gel assembly in polymer composites.⁵  As Director of the NSF PIRE: Bio-inspired Materials and Systems, I also lead an interdisciplinary team of US and Swiss researchers that are inspired by natural materials, such as the sea cucumber, caddisfly silk, and the extracellular matrix, towards the design of dynamic and tunable materials for soft robotics.”

Read LaShanda’s Soft Matter papers below!

1. Tunable hygromorphism: structural implications of low molecular weight gels and electrospun nanofibers in bilayer composites Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 283-291 (Emerging Investigators 2017 Issue)

2. Programming shape and tailoring transport: advancing hygromorphic bilayers with aligned nanofibers Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 5589 – 5596

3. Enhanced mechanical pathways through nature’s building blocks: amino acids Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 11431-11442

4. Thin film confinement of a spherical block copolymer via forced assembly co-extrusion Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 4381-4385

5. Mechanical enhancement via self-assembled nanostructures in polymer nanocomposites Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 2449 – 2455

These papers are all currently FREE to read and download until 20th March

Biography
LaShanda T.J. Korley recently joined the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware as a Distinguished Associate Professor.  Previously, she held the Climo Associate Professorship of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, where she started her independent career in 2007. Her research program involves utilizing design rules from Nature in the development of mechanically-enhanced and tunable materials. She is the PI of the NSF PIRE: Bio-inspired Materials and Systems.

She received a B.S. in both Chemistry & Engineering from Clark Atlanta University, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1999.  Dr. Korley completed her Ph.D. at MIT in Chemical Engineering and the Program in Polymer Science and Technology in 2005. LaShanda Korley was a Provost’s Academic Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.