Soft Math Symposium 2026

Venue

All talks will be held at the Pfizer Lecture Hall, Mallinckrodt Laboratory, Harvard University.

Location: 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Schedule

Day 1 — Friday (May 8)

08:30–09:00  Registration + Breakfast

09:00–09:05  Welcome

Session 1 — Physics (09:05–11:15)

Chair: Gary Choi

09:05–09:40 David Nelson — Defect emission and absorption on cones, and conical billiards  

09:40–10:10 Moumita Das — Rigidity and resilience of active biopolymer networks

10:10–10:25 Christoph Weber — Vacuoles in liquid droplets: a peculiar state

10:25–10:45 Coffee Break

10:45–11:00 Nadir Kaplan — Geometric Theory of Elastic Curves Bounded on Non-Euclidean Surfaces

11:00–11:15 Petur Bryde — Orientational dynamics and control of topological defects in 2D nematics

Session 2 — Biology (11:20–13:55, with lunch break)

Chair: Jennifer Shin

11:20–11:55 Clifford Tabin — Integrating physical forces and signaling in explaining various aspects of gut morphogenesis

11:55–12:25 Jan Skotheim — How cells measure and control their size

12:25–13:25 Lunch

13:25–13:40 Arpita Upadhyaya — Transcription factor dynamics in gene expression: the long and short of it

13:40–13:55 Chunzi Liu — Eggshell poroelasticity governs elasto-osmotic hatching dynamics in Schistosoma mansoni

Session 3 — Engineering (14:00–17:00)

Chair: Salem Mosleh

14:00–14:35 Katia Bertoldi — Why shoes squeak and fabrics fail and how we can fix it

14:35–15:05 Ho-Young Kim — Extremely flexible robots

15:05–15:20 Andreas Carlson — Title TBA

15:20–15:45 Coffee Break

15:45–16:20 Jörn Dunkel — Towards mind control of worms  

16:25–17:00 Pankaj Mehta — What do the fundamental constants of physics tell us about life?

17:30–19:00  Reception + Dinner (at Mather House)

Day 2 — Saturday (May 9)

08:30–09:00  Breakfast

Session 4 — Mathematics (09:00–11:05)

Chair: Aditi Chakrabarti

09:00–09:30 Sergio Rica — The search for finite-time singularity solutions of the Euler equations for incompressible and inviscid fluids

09:30–09:45 Lauren Niu — Gyroid Networks in S³ 

09:45–10:00 Mattia Serra — Information flows in dynamic tissues

10:00–10:15  Ido Regev — Networks, Paths and Reversibility: Mapping the Landscape of Plastic Deformation in Amorphous Solids

10:15–10:35 Coffee Break

10:35–10:50 Gary Choi — Mathematical and computational design of origami and kirigami metamaterials

10:50–11:05 Suraj Shankar — Topologically frustrated elastic sheets 

11:05–12:00 Poster Session

12:00–13:00 Lunch

Session 5 — Cross-Disciplinary Themes (13:00–14:35)

Chair:  Ludwig Hoffmann

13:00–13:30 Enrique Cerda — Delamination Driven by Active Surface Topography

13:30–13:45 Dervis Vural — Prediction and control of social evolution in dynamic fluids

13:50–14:05 Orit Peleg — Emergent spatiotemporal patterns in insect swarms

14:05–14:20 Ee Hou Yong — Understanding collective behavior in nature

14:20–14:35 Yuval Hart — Computational trade-offs as a core principle of brain function

14:35–14:50 Yeonsu Jung — Emergent cohesion via self-caging in maximally entangled rod packings

14:50–15:00  Closing Remarks + Adjourn

Evening: Informal self-organized dinner

Logistics

Hotel options:

• The Atlas Hotel

• Sheraton Commander Hotel

• Harvard Square Hotel

• The Charles Hotel

• Cambria Hotel Boston Somerville

• Le Méridien Boston Cambridge

• DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel Boston - Cambridge

• Courtyard by Marriott Boston Cambridge

Registration

Please register here if you would like to attend. There is a limited number poster presentation slots available. 

Program Participants

• Mahesh Bandi — OIST Graduate University, Japan

• Andreas Carlson — University of Oslo

• Enrique Cerda — Universidad de Santiago/University of Santiago

• Aditi Chakrabarti — Schlumberger-Doll Research

• Gary Choi — The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Kausik Das — University of Maryland Eastern Shore

• Moumita Das — Rochester Institute of Technology

• Levi Dudte — Optiver

• Luca Giomi — Leiden University

• Zengcai Guo — Tsinghua University

• Yuval Hart — Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Ludwig Hoffmann — Harvard

• Nadir Kaplan — Virginia Tech

• Ho-Young Kim — Seoul National University

• Hunter King — Rutgers University

• Ousmane Kodio — University of California, Santa Barbara

• Chunzi Liu — UC Berkeley

• Francesco Mori — Harvard CMSA

• Salem Mosleh — UMES

• Orit Peleg — University of Colorado Boulder

• Aaron Persad — University of Maryland Eastern Shore

• Ido Regev — Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel)

• Sergio Rica — Instituto de Fisica, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Mattia Serra — UCSD

• Suraj Shankar — University of Michigan

• Jennifer Shin — KAIST

• Aaron Persad — UMES

• Jan Skotheim — Professor of Biology, Stanford University

• Irina Tolkova — Cornell University

• Arpita Upadhyaya — University of Maryland, College Park

• Dominic Vella — University of Oxford

• Dervis Vural — University of Notre Dame

• Alfadhl Alkhaled —  UMES

• Christoph Weber — University of Augsburg

• Ee Hou Yong — Senior Lecturer/Nanyang Technological University

• Wim van Rees — MIT

• Briggs Pugner — UMES

Contact
Salem Al Mosleh (SAlMosleh@umes.edu)
Mahesh Bandi (mahesh.bandi@gmail.com)
Aditi Chakrabarti (aditi.chakrabarti14@gmail.com)
Gary Choi (ptchoi@cuhk.edu.hk)
Adam Cohen (cohen@chemistry.harvard.edu)
Jennifer Shin (j_shin@kaist.ac.kr)