Research

Across our research, transport, assembly, flow, organization, and mechanical function in soft, complex, and living matter emerge from many-body interactions shaped by stochastic forces and nonequilibrium driving. Their microstructure evolves, their response retains memory, and their governing mechanisms and internal states remain only partially and often indirectly accessible to measurement. Learning and representing these unresolved mechanisms and states is the common scientific challenge across the diverse systems and phenomena we study.

From this common foundation, our work spans several interrelated areas:

Our group works closely with experimentalists and draws on ideas across disciplines to tackle fundamental questions in complex systems. By building physical models and optimizing directly through them, we distinguish competing mechanisms and identify decisive tests. Our longer-term ambitions range from understanding how life arises from interacting matter to developing automated discovery and design loops that integrate physical models, AI, and experiment.

Research areas

Data-driven discovery of complex-fluid physics

Colloidal and biomolecular assemblies out of equilibrium

Targeted transport in complex environments