A fundamental materials challenge is to form structure that is not frozen in place but instead reconfigures internally driven by energy throughput and adapts to its environment robustly. Predicated on fluorescence imaging at the single-particle level, this talk describes quantitative studies of how this can happen. With Janus colloidal clusters, we show the powerful role of synchronized motion in self-assembly. In living cells, we find that transportation efficiency problems bear a provocative parallel with polymer chain trajectories with their spatial extent, and with jammed matter in their time evolution. A picture emerges in which simple experiments, performed at single-particle and single-molecule resolution, can dissect macroscopic phenomena in ways that surprise.

 

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Steve Granick’s research interests are in soft materials -- polymers, colloids, lipids, cells.  He graduated from Princeton University in 1978 and in 1982 earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. As a postdoc, he worked with Pierre-Gilles de Gennes in Paris and with Matthew Tirrell at the University of Minnesota.  With more than 250 refereed publications in various journals, his honors include the Paris-Sciences Medal (2004), the national Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society (2009), and the national Colloid and Surface Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society (2013).  Recent publications include Nature (2012), Nature (2011), and Science (2011).