SLAAM seminars

Announcement After a good run from spring 2021 to summer 2024, we are happy to introduce SLAAM seminars in a revamped format! The seminars are now organized by a team of faculty from multiple institutions in multiple countries! Please find us now at our new website!

The UC Merced Physics department and the CCBM are proud to bring to you a seminar series exclusively by postdocs from different institutions on Soft, Living, Active and Adaptive Matter (SLAAM). The series aims to promote inclusion by providing a forum for a diverse set of stellar speakers early in their careers and opportunities for faculty and graduate students to interact with them. Unless otherwise noted, SLAAM seminars will be held every other Monday, starting at 9:00 AM Pacific Time (11 am Central, 12 noon Eastern).

Each talk will be about 40 minutes with plenty of time for questions and discussion. The talks will be recorded with the speaker's consent and recordings of past talks can be found below on this page.

URL: https://ucmerced.zoom.us/j/92693607475

Everyone is welcome to attend!

Please sign up at this form to be included in the mailing list where talk announcements and zoom passcodes will be sent. Postdocs should indicate their interest in presenting through this form.

UC Merced Physics Department and CCBM members and affiliates will receive announcements by default.

Organizers
Faculty and postdocs: Alex Tayar, Kinjal Dasbiswas, Daniel Beller, Suraj Shankar
Graduate students: Madhuvanthi Athani, Abhinav Kumar, Jane B. Garcia, Patrick Noerr

Spring & Summer 2024

Feb 12	Menachem "Nachi" Stern (UPenn) Learning without neurons in physical systems [flyer] [recording]
Mar 18	Carmen Lee (NC State) Relating the microscale to the macroscale in granular materials [flyer] [recording]
Apr 15	Shreyas Gokhale (MIT) Excitable nonreciprocal solids [flyer]
May 20	Linnea Lemma (Princeton) Driven protein fluxes control the number, size, and position of an essential phase-separated organelle in algae [flyer]

Fall 2023

Oct 9

Mengqi Xu (UPenn, Perelman School of Medicine)
Myosin-1 facilitates symmetry breaking and the growth of actin comet tails
[flyer]

Nov 13

Isabella Graf (Yale)

A bifurcation integrates information from many noisy ion channels and allows for milli-Kelvin thermal sensitivity in the snake pit organ

[flyer]

Spring & Summer 2023

Jan 30	Andriy Goychuk (MIT) Folding patterns in heterogeneous active polymers [flyer] [recording]
Feb 13	Yongtian Luo (Johns Hopkins) Modeling the Hydrodynamic and Mechanical Effects of Fluid-Storing Biological Flow Network [flyer][recording]
Feb 27	Raphael Sarfati (University of Colorado Boulder) Physics of thinking matter: birds, bugs, sheep, and plenty of fireflies [flyer] [recording]
Mar 27	Miri Adler (Yale University) Principles of cell circuits for tissue composition: Insights into the stability and vulnerability of our tissues [flyer][recording]
Apr 10	Mengfei He (Syracuse University) Cross sections of doubly curved sheets as confined elastica [flyer][recording]
Apr 24	Fernando Caballero (UCSB) Phase separation in active liquid crystal mixtures: bulk and interfacial dynamics [flyer]
May 22	Pintu Patra (Heidelberg University) The role of shape and mechanics in biological active matter [flyer][recording]
Jun 12	Patrick McCall (TU Dresden and Max Planck Institute) Contrasting phases: insights into the physical properties of biomolecular condensates [ flyer ]
Jul 10	Abigail Plummer (Princeton) Fracture, instability, and phase transitions via constrained expansion [ flyer ] [recording]
Aug 7	Biswarup Ash (Weizmann Institute) Tunable three-dimensional architecture of nematic disclination lines [ flyer ] [recording]

Fall 2022

Sep 12	Krishna Shrinivas (Harvard) The Many Phases of a Cell [flyer] [recording]
Sep 26	Guang Shi (UIUC) Data-driven reconstruction of 3D genome from experimental data [flyer] [recording]
Oct 10	Yimin Luo (UCSB) Programming structural transitions in soft matter: physics and data driven approaches [flyer] [recording]
Oct 24	Miguel Ruiz-García (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) Bioinspired flow networks: Excitability, self-sustained oscillations and a fluidic memristor [flyer]
Nov 7	Noah Mitchell (UCSB) How biology uses physics to sculpt an inner organ [flyer][recording]
Nov 21	Yuqing Qiu (U Chicago) Thermodynamic control of organization and self-assembly of cytoskeletal networks far away from equilibrium [flyer][recording]
Dec 5	Varda Hagh (U Chicago) Systematic manipulation of disorder for extraordinary functionality in materials [flyer][recording]

Summer 2022

Jun 6	Ido Levin (University of Washington) New prospects in shape morphing sheets: unexplored pathways, 4D printing, and autonomous actuation [flyer] [recording]
Jun 20	Leroy Jia (Flatiron Institute) Membrane mechanics meet minimal manifolds [flyer] [recording]
July 18	Peter Foster (Brandeis University) Active mechanics of sea star oocytes [flyer]
Aug 1	Chrisy Xiyu Du (Harvard University) Magnetic Handshake Materials [flyer] [recording]
Aug 15	Alexander Mietke (MIT) Odd dynamics of living chiral crystals [flyer] [recording]
Aug 29	Kalpana Mandal (Terasaki Institute) Oxygen-releasing microparticles improve cardiomyocyte contractility under hypoxia [flyer]

Spring 2022

Jan 31	Mike Norton (Rochester Institute of Technology) Towards model-based control of active matter: active nematics and oscillator networks [flyer] [recording]
Feb 28	Caleb Wagner (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) Exact coherent structures and transition to turbulence in a confined active nematic [flyer] [recording]
Mar 7	Anna Lappala (Harvard University] 4D Chromosome Organization: Combining Polymer Physics, Knot Theory and High Performance Computing [flyer] [recording]
Mar 28	Eldad Afik (California Institute of Technology) Intrinsic Rhythms in a Giant Single-Celled Organism and the Interplay with Time-Dependent Drive, Explored via Self-Organized Macroscopic Waves [flyer] [recording]
Apr 4	Jonathan Michel (Rochester Institute of Technology) Making a Mesh of Things: Using Network Models to Understand the Mechanics of Heterogeneous Tissues [flyer] [recording]
Apr 11	Eduardo Vitral (University of Nevada, Reno) Better energies for low-dimensional elastic systems under combined bending and stretching [flyer] [recording]
Apr 25	Haicen Yue (Emory University) Non-regular behavior during the coalescence of liquid-like cellular aggregates [flyer] [recording]
May 9	Erin Teich (University of Pennsylvania) Crystallinity characterization of white matter in the human brain [flyer] [recording]
May 23	Vikrant Yadav (Yale University) The Equation of State of a Tissue [flyer] [recording]

Fall 2021

Aug 30	Zhihong You (UC Santa Barbara) Theory of activity-powered interfaces [flyer] [recording]
Sep 13	Ed Banigan (MIT) How polymer-loop-extruding motors shape chromosomes [flyer] [recording]
Sep 27	Severine Atis (University of Chicago) Growing in flows: from evolutionary dynamics to microbial jets [flyer] [recording]
Oct 11	Fabian Jan Schwarzendahl (Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf) Mutation induced infection waves in diseases like COVID-19 [flyer] [recording]
Oct 25	Hannah Yevick (MIT) Making connections: how epithelial tissues guarantee folding [flyer] [recording]
Nov 8	Anton Peshkov (Rochester) Metachronal waves in swarms of nematode Turbatrix aceti [flyer] [recording]
Nov 22	Navish Wadhwa (Harvard) Mechano-adaptation in a large protein complex [flyer] [recording]
Dec 6	Weikang Wang (Pittsburgh) Reconstruct cellular dynamics from single cell data [flyer] [recording]

Summer 2021

May 24	Brian Chang (Clark University) The life of a mucosalivary droplet: Lessons from synthetic breaths and sneezes [flyer] [recording]
Jun 7	Suraj Shankar (Harvard University) Flocking through complex environments [flyer] [recording]
Jun 21	Tapomoy Bhattacharjee (Princeton University) 3D Printing Cellular Communities: Mammalian Cells, Bacteria, And Beyond [flyer] [recording]
Jul 19	Olga Shishkov (University of Colorado Boulder) Internal structure of honey bee swarms for mechanical stability and division of labor [flyer]
Aug 2	Sulimon Sattari (Hokkaido University) Do leader cells drive collective behavior in Dictyostelium Discoideum amoeba colonies? [flyer] [recording]
Aug 16	Mehdi Molaei (University of Chicago) Flow singularities in soft materials: from thermal motion to active molecular stresses [flyer] [recording]

Spring 2021

Feb 1	Katherine Copenhagen (Princeton University) Topological defects promote layer formation in bacterial colonies [flyer] [recording]
Feb 15	Salem Al Mosleh (Harvard University) The finch beak: growth, form and function [flyer] [recording]
Mar 1	Handuo Shi (Stanford University) Chiral twisting in a bacterial cytoskeletal polymer affects filament size and orientation [flyer] [recording]
Mar 29	Stewart Mallory (Caltech) Phase Behavior and Self-Assembly of Active Colloids [flyer] [recording]
Apr 12	Danilo B. Liarte (Cornell University) Geometry, topology and soft matter: Emerging complex behavior of matter with disorder [flyer] [recording]
Apr 26	Alexandra Tayar (UC Santa Barbara) Liquid-liquid phase separation out of equilibrium [flyer] [recording]
May 10	Ritu Raman (MIT) Light-degradable hydrogels as dynamic triggers for implantable devices [flyer] [recording]