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Polymer composites are ideal candidates for next generation biomimetic soft materials because of their exquisite bottom-up designability. However, the richness of behaviours comes at a price: the need for precise and extensive…
In contrast to extensively studied defects in traditional materials, we report here for the first time a systematic investigation of the formation mechanism of intrinsic defects in self-assembled peptide nanostructures. The Monte Carlo…
We address the inverse problem of designing isotropic pairwise particle interaction potentials that lead to the formation of a desired lattice when a system of particles is cooled. The design problem is motivated by the desire to produce…
The self-assembly of submerged cold-plasma-treated polyethylene beads is reported. The plasma-treated immersed millimetrically-sized polyethylene beads formed well-ordered 2D quasi-crystalline structures. The submerged floating of light…
The regulation of various cellular processes heavily relies on the protein complexes within a living cell, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of their three-dimensional structures to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. While…
The objective of this thesis is to advance the understanding of complex physical phenomena through the lens of statistical physics. Specifically, it addresses two fundamental questions: What types of interactions can induce buckling of…
The kinetics of the assembly of semiflexible filaments through end-to-end annealing is key to the structure of the cytoskeleton, but is not understood. We analyze this problem through scaling theory and simulations, and uncover a regime…
Heterogeneous materials exhibit anisotropy which is influenced by factors such as individual phase properties and microstructural configuration that form crucial descriptors of heterogeneity. A review of anisotropy indices proposed in the…
The bipolar organization of the microtubule-based mitotic spindle is essential for the faithful segregation of chromosomes in cell division. Despite our extensive knowledge of genes and proteins, the physical mechanism of how the ensemble…
Understanding how monomeric proteins fold under in vitro conditions is crucial to describing their functions in the cellular context. Significant advances both in theory and experiments have resulted in a conceptual framework for describing…
Adhesion is a fundamental phenomenon that plays a role in many engineering and biological applications. This paper concerns the use of machine learning to characterize the effective adhesive properties when a thin film is peeled from a…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
Topological Interlocking assemblies are arrangements of blocks kinematically constrained by a fixed frame, such that all rigid body motions of each block are constrained only by its permanent contact with other blocks and the frame. In the…
Native protein folds often have a high degree of symmetry. We study the relationship between the symmetries of native proteins, and their designabilities -- how many different sequences encode a given native structure. Using a…
We propose a polymer model for the dynamics of chromatin replication in three dimensional space. Our simulations indicate that both immobile and tracking replisomes may self-assemble during the process, reconciling previous apparently…
Numerous transcription factors self-assemble into different order oligomeric species in a way that is actively regulated by the cell. Until now, no general functional role has been identified for this widespread process. Here we capture the…
Inspired by the quest for shape-shifting structures in a range of applications, we show how to create morphable structural materials using a neutrally stable unit cell as a building block. This unit cell is a self-stressed hinged structure…
Self-assembly plays an essential role in many natural processes, involving the formation and evolution of living or non-living structures, and shows potential applications in many emerging domains. In existing research and practice, there…
Controlling the size and shape of assembled structures is a fundamental challenge in self-assembly, and is highly relevant in material design and biology. Here, we show that specific, but promiscuous, short-range binding interactions make…
Heterogeneous systems of active matter exhibit a range of complex emergent dynamical patterns. In particular, it is difficult to predict the properties of the mixed system based on its constituents. These considerations are particularly…