Grainger College of Engineering, All Events

The mechanical properties of soft biological materials are highly tunable and are often governed by a subtle interplay between structural organization, internal and external stresses, and active, nonequilibrium driving forces. In this talk, I will discuss how these control knobs influence the mechanics and dynamics of biological materials, from biopolymer networks to fluid membranes. First, I will describe how mechanical phase transitions emerge in biopolymer networks and related disordered materials, with an emphasis on how proximity to criticality shapes their mechanics and dynamics. Second, I will show how nonequilibrium driving forces can influence the physical properties of fluid membranes, giving rise to striking morphological changes. Finally, I will discuss recent progress toward predicting the rheological properties of biological materials using machine learning approaches. Collectively, these studies illustrate how soft matter physics, computational methods, and machine learning can be integrated to predict, control, and ultimately design the mechanical behavior of biological and bioinspired materials.