Soft Matter Lab

Research Overview

A major theme in condensed matter physics is emergent phenomena wherein the collective behaviour of a system differs significantly from that of the individual constituents. For example, a hard rod suspended in a liquid is equally likely to point in any direction, yet in presence of many other rods it will on average point along a well defined direction. The laboratory focuses on understanding and exploiting the interplay between enthalpy and entropy to hierarchically assemble soft and dynamic materials with emergent properties. We study both equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems for this endeavour.

Filamentous viruses M13 which behave as hard rods, self-propelled reactivated cilia and single celled algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii are the major systems of interest in our lab. Our interdisciplinary work relies on techniques of biochemistry, video microscopy and optical tweezers.