Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics Meeting
23rd Annual Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics Meeting
In-Person, UMass-Amherst
Integrated Learning Center (rooms ILCS 240 and ILC S220)
Saturday, October 22, 2022
9:30 am - 3:30 pm
Registration is closed (see carpooling options)
Registration deadline (for submitting a table talk abstract and free food), October 16
The Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics meeting (GBASM) is a workshop that brings together researchers from the greater Boston area and beyond interested in statistical mechanics, nonlinear dynamics, condensed matter physics, biophysics, and related topics for a day of presentations and discussions. The meeting consists of four invited talks, each of length 30 minutes and contributed "table talks". During table talks, each contributor gives a brief announcement (about 30 seconds, no slides) of his/her work in the lecture hall; we then move to an adjacent room where each contributor sits at a table with a laptop or tablet and discusses his/her research with interested participants. We have found that this format eliminates the expense (and time) associated with preparing a poster but provides greater feedback than a short talk. For preparation of a table talk, we recommend preparing slides for a ten minute talk with additional supplementary slides to answer questions. The deadline for submitting a table talk abstract is October 16.
Coffee, tea, and bagels will be served from 9:30 am to 1:00 am and lunch will be served at approximately 12:30pm. If you register by Sunday, October 16 coffee, snacks and lunch are free. The first of three sessions begins at 10:00 am. Coffee and tea will be available during the breaks.
Registration is free. Please do it by October 16 to submit a table talk abstract and receive free food.
Meeting Program
9:30 – 10:00 Registration, Breakfast and Coffee
Session I
Chair: Shuang Zhou, UMass Amherst
10:00 – 10:40 Invited Talk: Julien Tailleur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Reciprocal or non-reciprocal interactions: when the scale is in question”
10:40 – 10:45 30-Second Table Talk Summaries for Part 1
10:45 – 11:20 Table Talks and Coffee Part 1 (refer to table assignment)
Session II
Chair: Varghese Mathai, UMass Amherst
11:20 – 12:00 Invited Talk: Amir Pahlavan, Yale University
“Diffusiophoretic transport of colloids in disordered media”
12:00 – 12:40 Invited Talk: Manasa Kandula, UMass Amherst
“From active dimers to percolated networks – exploiting field driven interactions”
12:40 – 1:45 Lunch
Session III
Chair: Mike Hagan, Brandeis University
1:45 – 1:55 30-Second Table Talk Summaries for Parts 2 and 3
1:55 – 2:30 Table Talks and Coffee Part 2 (refer to table assignment)
2:30 – 3:05 Table Talks and Coffee Part 3 (refer to table assignment)
3:05— 3:45 Invited Talk: Kirill Korolev, Boston University
“Universality classes in traveling waves modeled by stochastic reaction-diffusion equations.”
Table Talks Format
During table talks, contributors give brief (30 seconds, no slides) announcements of their work in the lecture hall; we then move to the room where each contributor sits at a table with a laptop or tablet and discusses their research with interested participants. Theorists please sit near the white boards. We have found that this format eliminates the expense (and time) associated with preparing a poster but provides greater feedback than a short talk. We recommend preparing a 10-minute talk with additional supplementary slides to answer questions.
Table Talks Part 1 (10:45 – 11:20 )
Table 1 Alberto Dinelli (Université Paris Cité) Self-organization of bacterial mixtures interacting via quorum-sensing
Table 2 Andreas Neophytou (University of Birmingham) Unravelling the mysterious behaviour of tetrahedral liquids: Topological nature of the liquid-liquid phase transition.
Table 3 Andriy Goychuk (MIT) Polymer folding through active processes implications for genome organization
Table 4 Beatrice Lunsford-Poe (UMass Amherst) Microrheology of Liquid Crystal Materials
Table 5 Chris Amey (Brandeis University) Model discovery in active nematic systems
Table 6 Devadyouti Das (UMass Amherst) Measurement of director twist angle in low birefringence nematic liquid crystals
Table Talks Part 2 (1:55 – 2:30)
Table 1 Erez Aghion (UMass Boston) Thermodynamic speed limits on mechanical work
Table 2 Federica Ferretti (MIT) Signatures of irreversibility in microscopic models of flocking
Table 3 Jing Yan (Yale University) Biofilm as self-shaping active matter
Table 4 Kai Zhang (Duke Kunshan University) Thermodynamics of the Ising model encoded in restricted Boltzmann machines
Table 5 Michael Wang (UMass Amherst) Thermal stability and secondary aggregation in frustration-limited assembly
Table 6 Mingzhu Cui (UMass Amherst) Contact angle hysteresis of wetting for hydrophobic, anisotropically curved surface
Table Talks Part 3 (2:30 – 3:05)
Table 1 Nicholas Hackney (UMass Amherst) Condensation in Geometrically Frustrated Assembly
Table 2 Saptorshi Ghosh (Brandeis University) Optimal control of active nematics in bulk and confined geometries
Table 3 Sarvesh Uplap (Brandeis University) Non-equilibrium fluctuations of vesicles containing active filaments.
Table 4 Sasha Toole (Mount Holyoke College) Probing microtubule-kinesin active matter in a low activity regime
Table 5 Sunghan Ro (MIT) Macroscopic phase of active matter depends on the boundary conditions
Table 6 Yating Zhang (UMass Amherst) Sedimentation of non-spherical particles
Invited Speakers
(Unfortunately Julien can't be here. His graduate student Alberto Dinelli will give the talk.)
Reciprocal or non-reciprocal interactions: when the scale is in question
The role of non-reciprocal interactions has attracted a lot of attention recently. We consider this question in the context of bacterial mixtures containing several interacting strains of swimming bacteria. Quorum-sensing and chemotactic interactions are wide-spread in the microbial world and are intrinsically non-reciprocal due to the lack of momentum conservation. Nevertheless, we show that they coarse-grain into large-scale descriptions that can be either reciprocal or non-reciprocal. In the former case, we show how effective free energies can be built to account for static patterns observed in microscopic simulations. Conversely, these systems are strongly out of equilibrium in the non-reciprocal regime where they may exhibit dynamical patterns. In all cases, we are able to account for the phase diagrams of the microscopic systems without any fitting parameters.
Diffusiophoretic transport of colloids in disordered media
Solutal gradients due to mixing and reactions in disordered media are ubiquitous across multiple length and time scales, from nutrient or drug transport in bacterial biofilms to contaminant spreading in subsurface geological formations. These solute gradients are known to drive diffusiophoretic migration of colloids in idealized configurations in the presence of sharp solute gradients and in the absence of background flows. Yet, the influence of diffusiophoresis on the transport of colloids in heterogeneous environments is not understood. We combine microfluidic experiments and numerical simulations to address this question.
From active dimers to percolated networks – exploiting field driven interactions
The interplay of external field induced interactions between colloids and the self-propulsion of colloids provides a unique platform to realize novel dynamically tunable, and reversible assemblies. In this talk, I will share two examples of this: In the first one, I will discuss the strategy to make active colloids by the in-situ assembly of passive colloids and further steer them via passive particles in their vicinity. In the second example, I will show our efforts to use electric field-induced interactions between active and passive particles to achieve large-scale assemblies that can switch reversibly from active fluids to networks. I will show our recent results that show qualitative similarities in the phase diagram of active-passive mixtures and colloid-polymer systems.
Universality classes in traveling waves modeled by stochastic reaction-diffusion equations.
Reaction-diffusion waves describe diverse natural phenomena from crystal growth in physics to tumor growth in biology. Many aspects of these phenomena are stochastic because expanding entities---whether atoms or cells---are discrete. A quantitative description of fluctuations in growing populations remains an open problem. Recently, we have made significant progress in this direction by looking at physical processes through the lens of biology. I will show that expanding populations fall into one of three universality classes with very different physical and genetic properties. For example, genealogical trees have different structure, and fluctuations scale differently with the population density. Surprisingly, scaling exponents and many other properties can be computed exactly. On the biology side, our theory predicts that positive density-dependence in growth or dispersal could dramatically alter evolution in expanding populations even when its contribution to the expansion velocity is small. On the mathematics side, our work highlights potential pitfalls in the commonly-used method to approximate stochastic dynamics and shows how to avoid them.
Location
The meeting will be held at the Integrated Learning Center Building (in rooms ILCS 240 and ILC S220) at UMass-Amherst.
Driving and Parking
Free Parking may be available on Lot #43 on campus of UMass-Amherst, which is about 5 mins walk to the meeting location (Integrated Learning Center; rooms ILCS 240 and ILC S220). Driving map below.
Carpooling options to UMass-Amherst
Please use this website to offer rides or sigh up for a ride.
Additional Information
Please contact Shuang Zhou if you have any more questions about the meeting.
Meeting Organizers
Shuang Zhou (UMass Amherst)
Varghese Mathai (UMass Amherst)
Manasa Kandula (UMass Amherst)
Max Bi (Northeastern University)
Nikta Fakhri (MIT Physics)
Michael Hagan (Brandeis University)
Ben Rogers (Brandeis University)
Adam Willard (MIT Chemistry)
Financial Support
The cost of this year's GBASM meeting is generously subsidized by:
Department of Physics, UMass, Amherst
Department of Physics, Boston University
Department of Physics, Northeastern University
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Brandeis University
Department of Chemistry, MIT.
Department of Physics, MIT.