Welcome to the homepage of Cheng's research group on theoretical and computational soft matter in the Department of Physics at Virginia Tech. We are also part of the Center for Soft Matter and Biological Physics. Dr. Cheng is an affiliate faculty member of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute and the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Graduate and undergraduate students are welcome to send inquiries about potential research positions in the group.

We are actively recruiting new graduate students with full GRA/GTA support. Please contact Dr. Cheng at chengsf@vt.edu for more details.

Our research is/was sponsored by:

National Science Foundation

Air Force Office of Scientific Research

American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund

Jeffress Trust Awards Program in Interdisciplinary Research

SABIC Innovative Plastics

The 4-VA Consortium @ Virginia Tech

Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science @ Virginia Tech

Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace. (Confucius)

Recognize what you know, and recognize what you do not know. (Confucius)

Nothing is truly original. Everything is derived by combining existing building blocks. (Michael Simmons)

So how do you go about teaching them something new? By mixing what they know with what they don’t know. Then, when they see in their fog something they recognise they think, “Ah I know that!” And then it is just one more step to “Ah, I know the whole thing.” And their mind thrusts forward into the unknown and they begin to recognise what they didn’t know before and they increase their powers of understanding.  (Picasso)

Although simple insights appear trivial in retrospect, discovering them is a rare privilege. Complex arguments which are born after tedious labor can be regarded as fruits that are in plain sight but difficult to reach. Rare insights, on the other hand, are low-hanging fruits often hidden from view. These two options are the only ones left when all the visible low-hanging fruits are already picked up. (Abraham Loeb)

The Feynman Technique of Learning: Choose a Concept; Teach it to a Toddler; Identify Gaps and Go Back to the Source Material; Review and Simplify. (Shane Parrish)