January 2024 - Mike Dimitriyev (former postdoc) joins MSE faculty at Texas A&M. Good luck, Mike!
May 2023 - Isaac Spivack (group alum, now grad student in physics at U. Michigan) is awarded the NDSEG Fellowship! Congrats, Isaac!
April 2023 - Work with collaborator, Ned Thomas, "How does your gyroid grow? A mesoatomic perspective on supramolecular, soft matter network crystals" is highlight as the first article in the Physical Review Materials collection: Self-Assembly of Complex Phases in Block Copolymer Materials.
March 2023 - Ben Greenvall is awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue his research in the field of Materials Theory, studying programmable packing of complex filament assemblies. Way to go, Ben!!
August 2022 - Doug Hall successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation, "Self-Limiting Morphologies in Geometrically Frustrated Assemblies". Congrats Dr. Hall!
May 2022 - Abhi and Mike's work "Medial packing and elastic asymmetry stabilize the double-gyroid in block copolymers" is highlighted as an Editor's Highlight in May 12th publication of Nature Communications. See also, UMass press release .
November 2021 - Daria Atkinson's work "Mechanics of Metric Frustration in Contorted Filament Bundles: From Local Symmetry to Columnar Elasticity" in highlighted as an Editor's Suggestion in November 19th issue of Physical Review Letters.
October 2021 - Our perspective article "Block Copolymers beneath the Surface: Measuring and Modeling Complex Morphology at the Subdomain Scale" with Xueyan Feng and Ned Thomas (Texas A&M) is highlighted on the front cover of the October 26, 2021 issue of Macromolecules.
October 2021- Abhiram Reddy successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation, "Modeling chain packing in complex phases of self-assembled block copolymers". Abhi starts a postdoctoral position at Northwestern University in November. Congrats Dr. Reddy!
July 2021 - New postdoc, Dr. Michael Wang joins the research group. Welcome Michael! Dr. Hao Wu leaves the group for a position at the Wenzhou Institute. Congrats, Dr. Wu!
May 2021- Isaac Spivack defends his Commonwealth Honors College undergraduate thesis, "Finite Equilibrium Self-Assembly of Trapezoidal 'Puzzlemer' Particles". Way to go Isaac!
April 2021- Daria Atkinson is awarded the 2021 Kandula Sastry Award by the UMass Physics Department in recognition for an outstanding Ph.D. thesis in Physics. Congrats, Daria!
March 2021 - Abhiram Reddy is selected as a finalist APS (DPOLY) Padden Award at the March Meeting for his talk "Revisiting packing frustration and strong-segregation stability of double-gyroid in block copolymer melts". Congrats Abhi!
July 2020 - Daria Atkinson successfully defends her Ph.D. dissertation, "Filaments, fibers, and foliations in frustrated soft materials". Daria will start a new position as Penn Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow on September 1. Congrats Dr. Atkinson!
May 2020 - Following cancellation of APS 2020 March Meeting, Doug co-organizes (with D. Hayagawa and A. McMullen) DSOFT (virtual) Short course on "DNA Nanotechnology meets Soft Matter", featuring 7 fantastic lectures by experts in the field and attended by over 200 participants worldwide. Way to go, Doug!
April 2020 - New postdoc, Dr. Mike Dimitriyev joins the research group. Welcome Mike!
November 2019 - Article on "Seeing mesoatomic distortions in soft-matter crystals of a double-gyroid block copolymer" with Chris, Abhi, Ishan and collaborators Dr. Xueyan Feng and Ned Thomas appears in November 7 issue of Nature. See Ned and Xueyan's video describing the work!
October 2019 - Daria gives (Halloween!) Condensed Matter Seminar in UMass Physics, describing her work on "When your filaments are fibers: the geometry and elasticity of filament bundles"
September 2019 - News & Views article with Abhi, "Supramolecular Assembly: A cornerstone of complex crystals", highlights new observations of Frank Kasper Z phase in self-assembled soft spheres by S. Cheng, M. Huang and coworkers in Nature Chemistry.
June 2019 - Daria's paper, "Constant spacing in filament bundles" is published as Featured Article of the June 2019 Issue of New Journal of Physics (see our video abstract here).
February 2019 - Doug's paper, "How geometric frustration shapes twisted fibres, inside and out: competing morphologies of chiral filament assembly" in the June 2016 issue of Interface Focus is highlighted by a Roya Zandi in a commentary on in the Journal Club for Condensed Matter.
January 2019 - Yiwei's new paper (with Benny Davidovitch) on "Geometrically incompatible confinement on solids" is highighted on the cover of the January 29, 2019 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ! See also, UMass press release , CNS Naturally Newsworthy, and Commentary, "Buckling sheets open a door to understanding self-organization in soft matter", by S. Venkataramani .
December 2018 - New postdoc, Dr. Hao Wu joins the research group. Welcome Hao!
June 2018 - Collaborative study with Andreea Panaitescu and Arshad Kudrolli on tomographic study of 3D structure of twisted bundles, "Persistence of Perfect Packing in Twisted Bundles of Elastic Filaments", is featured on the cover of the June 15, 2018 issue of Physical Review Letters.
December 2017 - Qingyou Meng successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation, "Complex Ground States of Vortices and Filaments"; Ishan Prasad successfully defends his dissertation, "Self-Assembling Networks in Soft Matter". Congrats Drs. Meng and Prasad!
November 2017 - Workshop on Geometrically Frustrated Self-Assemblies (co-organized with Pierre Ronceray) is held Princeton Center for Theoretical Sciences
July 2017 - News & Views article, "Self-Assembly: Misfits Unite", highlights new model of geometrically frustrated assembly by M. Lenz and T. Witten in Nature Physics.
June 2017 - Chris Burke presents talk, "Modeling Intra-Domain Textures and Chirality Transfer in Block Copolymer Melts with Polar and Nematic Segment Ordering", at 2017 Gordon Research Conference on Liquid Crystals (and GRS!).
September 2016 - Spotlight article, "Perspective: Geometrically frustrated assemblies" is featured on the cover of the September 21 issue of Journal of Chemical Physics and selected as an Editor's Pick.
August 2016 - New postdoc, Dr. Chris Burke joins the research group. Welcome Chris!
April 2016 - Amir Azadi is awarded the Kandula Sastry Award by the UMass Physics Department in recognition for an outstanding Ph.D. thesis in Physics. Congrats, Amir!
March 2016 - Doug and Isaac's new paper on "Morphology selection via geometric frustration in chiral filament bundles" appears in July 2016 issue of Nature Materials ! See also, UMass press release , and News & Views piece, "Chiral Bundles: Frustrated Shapes", by H. Aharoni and E. Sharon .
July 2015 - Luis Cajamarca successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation, "Elasticity and Geometry in Curved-Filament Assemblies". Congratulations Dr. Cajamarca! (In August, Luis begins a position at Loomis-Sayles)
June 2015 - Isaac Bruss successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation, "Geometry and Thermodynamics of Filament Bundles". Congratulations Dr. Bruss! (In August, Isaac begins a postdoc position at University of Michigan.)
June 2015 - Amir Azadi successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation, "Emergent Structure of Multi-Dislocation Ground States in Frustrated Assemblies". Congratulations Dr. Azadi! (In August, Amir begins a postdoc position at Harvard.)
June 2015 - Colloquium article on "Geometry and optimal packing of twisted columns and filaments" is featured on the cover of the April-June issue of Reviews of Modern Physics.
May 2015 - Viewpoint article on "Chirality Transfer in Block Copolymer Melts: Emerging Concepts" is featured on the cover of the May 19th issue of ACS MacroLetters.
April 2015 - Luis's article (w/collaborators @ Brandies) "Measuring cohesion between macromolecular filaments, one pair at a time: Depletion-induced microtubule binding" is featured as an Editor's Suggestion the in the April, 2 Issue of Physical Review Letters.
July 2013 - Isaac's article on "Topological defects, surface geometry and cohesive energy of twisted filament bundles" is highlighted on the Soft Matter Blog.
May 2013 - Article on "Frustration and packing in curved-filament assemblies: from isometric to isomorphic bundles" -- featured on the cover of the August 7th issue of Soft Matter -- is highlighted on the Soft Matter Blog.
September 2012 - Wei Zhao successfully defends his doctoral dissertation, "Helical Ordering in Chiral Block Copolymers". Congratulations, Dr. Zhao!
July 2012 -Isaac Bruss's article on "Non-Euclidean geometry of twisted filament bundle packing" -- published in July 3rd issue of PNAS -- is highlighted on the Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics.
May 2012 - Isaac wins best student poster award for his poster, "Assembly and packing of twisted bundles", at Frontiers of Soft Matter 2012.
March 2012 - Image from article Continuum theory of disclinations in filament bundles is featured on Physical Review E Kaleidoscope.
July 2010 - Article on lattice defects in two-dimensionally ordered filament bundles is featured on the cover of the July 23rd issue of Physical Review Letters.
Dec 2009 - Homin Shin's article on "Cooperativity and Frustration in Protein-Mediated Parallel Actin Bundles" -- featured as an Editor's Suggestion in Dec. 4th issue of Physical Review Letters) -- is highlighted on the Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics.
May 2009 - Image from article theory of chiral filament bundles is featured on Physical Review E Kaleidoscope.