Simulations of Soft Matter 

Group Leader: Dr Halim Kusumaatmaja
 Welcome to the Kusumaatmaja group based in the Department of Physics at Durham!  We are interested in Theoretical and Computational Soft Matter and Biophysics. Our work is interdisciplinary, lying at the interface between Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, and Biology. Please see our research summary and publications if you want to learn more about our work.

Current Opportunities (Updated 3rd March 2017):    
    • Prospective SOFI CDT Students (2017 Cohort): Our group is offering a research project on "Harnessing Surface roughness and Ionic Effects for Liquid Repellent Surfaces". Read more here: [Project1]
    Recent News:    
    • 10/8/2017: Jorge's paper with Fabien Paillusson and Halim on "On the Critical Casimir Interaction between Anisotropic Inclusions on a Membrane" has been accepted for publication in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. [arXiv]
    • 24/7/2017: Benjamin's paper with Jack Law, Buddho Chakrabarti and Halim on "Dynamic Morphologies and Stability of Droplet Interface Bilayers" has been submitted for publication. 
    • 10-14/7/2017: Halim gave an invited talk at the 26th International Conference on Discrete Simulation of Fluid Dynamics (DSFD 2017) entitled "Modelling Ternary Fluids with High Density Ratio". Muhammad Sadullah also gave a contributed talk on "Study Of Factors Influencing Droplet Mobility On Liquid Infused Surfaces". [www]
    • 5-7/7/2017: Halim is attending the SOFI CDT Soft Matter Conference. [www]
    • 26-30/6/2017: Halim attended a workshop on Mathematical Approaches to Interfacial Dynamics in Complex Fluids at Banff International Research Station and gave an invited talk on "Modelling Ternary Fluids with High Density Ratio". [www]
    • 21/6/2017: Halim attended and spoke at the UKCOMES Annual Meeting at Daresbury Laboratory.
    • 15/6/2017: Halim is speaking at a one-day event organised by the NODES research & training centre. [www]
    • 6/6/2017: Halim co-organises the IOP Theory of Condensed Matter Annual Meeting in Warwick. [www]
    • 5/6/17: A joint paper with Ewan Hemingway and Suzanne Fielding on "Edge Fracture in Complex Fluids" is accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. [arXiv] [www]
    • 24/5/2017: Halim visited Loughborough Applied Mathematics and gave a talk on "Modelling drop dynamics and contact line motion using diffuse interface models".
    • 8-12/5/2017: Halim visited MIT Mathematics and gave a Physical Mathematics Seminar on liquid infused surfaces and phase separation in bicontinuous cubic phase.
    • 12/4/2017: Halim co-organises the kick-off meeting for UKFN's Special Interests Group on “Droplet and flow interactions with bio-inspired and smart surfaces”.
    • 6/4/17: Halim gave a Soft & Biological Matter Seminar at the University of Leiden on liquid infused surfaces and phase separation in bicontinuous cubic phase.
    • 23/3/17: Halim gave a talk at the School of Mathematics, University of Bristol on "Liquid Repellent Surfaces".
    • 6/3/17: We are pleased that Alvin Shek and Andrew Christy have chosen to carry out their PhDs in our group. Alvin and Andrew are part of the Soft Matter and Functional Interfaces Centre for Doctoral Training, and they will start in April.
    • 1/3/17: Jack Panter's paper with Halim has been highlighted in JPhys+ blog [www]. The aim of JPhys+ is to highlight high quality papers published in any of the Journal of Physics journals. Well done Jack!
    • 27/2/17: Halim and Jörn Dunkel (MIT) have been awarded a Royal Society International Exchanges grant to collaborate on a new project "Translating Sequencing Data Into Representative And Predictive Fitness Landscape".
    • 14/2/17: Halim visited Institut Lumière Matière, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and gave a talk on wetting transitions on superhydrophobic surfaces and phase separation in bicontinuous cubic phase.
    • 13/2/17: Moritz Wöhrwag is visiting our group from ETH Zurich until the end of March. Moritz will work on ternary lattice Boltzmann method.
    • 16/1/17: Our new paper on "The Impact of Surface Geometry, Cavitation, and Condensation on Wetting Transitions: Posts and Reentrant Structures" is published in Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter [www][arXiv].  Special issue on Complex Fluids at Structured Surfaces.
    • 21/12/16: Our new paper on contact angle and contact angle hysteresis on liquid infused surfaces is published in Soft Matter [arXiv][www]. Emerging Investigator Special Issue. Chosen as Cover [www].
    • 13/12/16: Our CECAM workshop on "Addressing metastability in interfacial phenomena across multiple time and length scales" has been approved. The dates are 29 August - 1 September 2017 at CECAM-HQ-EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland [www].
    • 2/12/16: Halim gave the condensed matter theory seminar in Oxford on liquid infused surfaces and phase separation in bicontinuous cubic phase.
    • 1/12/16: Our proposal for a special interests group (SIG) on “Droplet and flow interactions with bio-inspired and smart surfaces” for the UK Fluids Network has been approved. Halim is co-leading the SIG with Glen McHale and Ben Xu (Northumbria).
    • 28/10/16: Halim's project on "Wetting of Elastic Fibres: A Novel Immersed Boundary-Lattice Spring-Lattice Boltzmann Simulation Approach" is approved for funding by EPSRC [www].
    • 17-19/10/16: Jack Panter, a PhD student in our group, is attending the Liquids @ Interfaces conference in Paris. Jack will present a poster on "The impact of Surface Geometry, Cavitation and Condensation on Wetting Transitions on Superamphiphobic Surfaces".
    • 20-23/9/16: Halim is attending and giving a talk on liquid infused surfaces in a CECAM workshop Non-equilibrium dynamics of thin films- solids, liquids and bioactive materials.
    • 12-16/9/16: Muhammad Sadullah, a PhD student in our group, is attending the 4th International Soft Matter Conference in Grenoble. Subkhi will present a poster on "Lattice Boltzmann simulations of Lubricant Infused Surfaces".
    • 1/9/16: Our paper on the Thomson problem and its connection to Smale's 7th problem is published in Physical Review Letters [arXiv] [www]. Chosen as PRL Editors' Suggestion. News Article. Phys.Org Article. CMP highlight. AMS Math in the Media.
    • 4/8/16: Halim's book with Timm Krüger, Alexander Kuzmin, Orest Shardt, Goncalo Silva and Erlend Viggen, "The Lattice Boltzmann Method: Principles and Practice", can now be ordered online here.
    • 26/7/16: Halim's paper with Fabien on phase separation on bicontinuous cubic phases is published in Physical Review Letters [arXiv] [www]. This paper also includes contribution from a Durham undergraduate summer student, funded by the BSI.
    • 18-22/7/16: Jorge Benet, a PDRA in our group, is attending StatPhys26 in Lyon. Jorge will give a talk on "Demixing transitions in bicontinuous cubic phase close to the critical point". 
    • 29-30/6/16: Halim, Jack Law and Will Foster are going to the Soft Matter Showcase and SOFI Industry Day in Leeds.
    • 8-10/6/16: Halim gave an invited talk at the Lattice Boltzmann 2016 workshop at University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy.
    • 29/5-5/6/16: Halim visited Institut Lumière Matière, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and gave a talk there.
    • 25/5/16: A new paper on dense packings of particles on spherical surfaces is published in Soft Matter [arXiv][www].
    • 11-13/5/16: Halim visited the Department of Mathematics, Penn State University and gave a talk there.
    • 8-10/5/16: Halim gave an invited talk at the 115th Statistical Mechanics Conference, Rutgers University [www].
    • 18/4/16: We welcome two new PhD students, Jack Law and Will Foster. Jack will work with Halim and Mark Miller, while Will with Halim and Kislon Voitchovsky.
    • 11/3/16: A new paper on ternary free energy lattice Boltzmann is published in Physical Review E [arXiv][www]. One of the images was chosen for PRE Kaleidoscope [www].