Colloquium Series: Dr. Zvonimir Dogic, UC Santa Barbara

Join us for our Colloquium Series. Dr. Zvonimir Dogic, a research professor at UC Santa Barbara will be joining us to present his research on “Sculpting membrane structure, mechanics and dynamics with active fluids” at Chapman Hall, Room 125.

Research Synopsis

Significant progress has been made in our understanding of equilibrium self-assembly. By encoding intermolecular interactions and minimizing free energy, one can rationally design assemblages of remarkable properties. In comparison, our understanding of how large-scale structure and dynamics occur away from equilibrium is less complete. We describe a hierarchical self-organizing process of remarkable complexity. Starting with an initially uniform mixture of microtubule-based active fluid and passive actin filaments, we observe emergence of structures and dynamical patterns on ever-increasing length scales. Active fluids sculpt the structure, shape, mechanics and dynamics of the actin network. Eventually, one observes formation of macroscopically large actin-based thermalized membranes whose out-of-plane bending rigidity and in-plane oscillatory patterns are driven by the enveloping actin fluid. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate a need for developing theoretical understanding of out-of-equilibrium self-organizing processes.

Biography

Dogic Group

Zvonimir Dogic research interests are primarily experimental, and span both equilibrium and non-equilibrium phenomena. He uses various biological architectures to create novel soft materials that exhibit physics that is not easily accessible by using purely synthetic methods. He actively collaborates with numerous theorists as well as experimentalists from different disciplines both within and outside of physics. He obtained his BA and PhD in Physics from Brandeis University. After postdoctoral positions in Research Center Julich, Germany and University of Pennsylvania, he was a Research Fellow at Rowland Institute at Harvard. In 2007 he started as an Assistant Professor in Physics at Brandeis University, and in 2017 he moved to University of California at Santa Barbara.