Ibec Seminar: Giorgio Volpe
Friday, May 29 @ 8:00 am–10:00 am
Steering Self-organization in Active Colloids and Droplets through Confinement
Confinement, whether externally imposed or generated by the system itself, plays a central role in shaping the dynamics and self-organization of active matter. In natural systems, such as microbial communities and social insects, self-reinforced confinement is exploited to create functional structures and accomplish complex collective tasks. In contrast, the potential of such mechanisms in synthetic active systems remains largely unexplored. In this talk, I will present our recent work demonstrating how confinement can be harnessed as a generic design principle to program collective behaviour in active matter and non-equilibrium systems with applications in micro-robotics, 4D printing, and organic electronics.
Giorgio Volpe is Professor of Soft Matter and group leader of the Soft Active Matter laboratory in the Department of Chemistry, University College London. He obtained his PhD in Photonics at ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona (Spain) in 2012. His current research focuses on studying the emergence of non-equilibrium phenomena in both biological and synthetic soft matter for applications in materials science and healthcare. To date, he has published more than 50 peer-reviewed research articles and reviews in high-impact journals for the fields of active matter, soft matter and photonics.
