We are pleased to announce that the International workshop on Active and Soft Matter 2026 - Responding to complex environments - will be held at Kyushu University (Ito campus) on 23 and 24 of March, 2026.
Active matter often has an ability to adapt its dynamics to its perceived environment. For example, for animate systems predators follow prey or, on a smaller length scale, biological cells search for nutrients. Likewise, inanimate soft matter, such as polymers, gels, foams or colloids, may respond to external stimuli from their environment in a nonlinear way, leading to transitions between fundamentally different system states.
The aim of the workshop is to share recent results on active and soft matter, in particular with respect to the effect of the environment, and to discuss future challenges.
2026/02/20 (Fri): Deadline for the abstract submission for contributed oral presentations
2026/03/06 (Fri): Deadline for the abstract submission for contributed poster presentations
2026/03/17 (Tue): Deadline for the registration without presentations
2026/03/23 (Mon): International workshop on Active and Soft Matter 2026 - Responding to complex environment (Day1)
2026/03/24 (Tue): International workshop on Active and Soft Matter 2026 - Responding to complex environment (Day2)
Kyushu University, Ito Campus (West zone 1, in the building number 36 in the campus map ).
See the following link for the access.
Azam Gholami (NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE)
Oxygen Deficiency Drives Drastic Pattern Transition in Algal Bioconvection
Matthew Turner (Warwick University, UK)
Bottom-up models of collective motion
The program of the workshop will be posted here after the deadline of the contributed presentations.
The workshop is planned to start at around noon on 23 Mar and to end before 16:00 on 24 Mar.
We accept abstracts for contributed oral presentations (approx. 20 min each) and contributed poster presentations.
If you wish to give a contributed oral presentation, please finish the registration by 2026/02/20 (Fri) from the registration.
If you wish to give a contributed poster presentation, please finish the registration by 2026/03/06 (Fri) from the registration.
If the number of submissions exceeds the number of slots for contributed oral presentations, the speakers will be selected based on the abstracts. The submissions not selected as contributed oral presentations will be considered as contributed poster presentations.
To attend the workshop, please register from the following link by 2026/03/17 (Tue).
Registration page: https://forms.gle/4KRaKs1zpkAM5Rbm8
Mitsusuke Tarama (Kyushu University)
E-mail: activesoftmatter2026@googlegroups.com
Please feel free to contact the organiser if you have any questions.
MEXT KAKENHI “Ethological Dynamics in Diorama Environments (Grant No. 21H05303)"
This workshop is supported by the JSPS KAKENHI project (Grant Number 24H01485).
This workshop is also a part of the JSPS Core-to-Core Program “Advanced core-to-core network for the physics of self-organizing active matter (JPJSCCA20230002)”.