Talk “Soft Matter, Hard Problems” at Mount Holyoke College

I was delighted to visit today the Physics department at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Thanks to the wonderful faculty and students for hosting me and asking such amazing questions in the talk! The abstract for the talk was:

“Many of the materials we encounter in our daily life, including biological matter, oils, foams, food, coffee(!), wine, etc. are examples of a broad class of things referred to as Soft Matter. The role of Physicists in their study is to explain how their microscopic structure leads to bulk material properties and behavior—with this insight we can develop new devices, create advanced materials optimized for various applications and resolve problems found in their manufacturing. In this talk, I give a broad overview of some of the approaches we use illustrated with examples from my own research in the theory of soft matter.”