News: Events

The Nagel group introduced a new class of pluripotent metamaterials: trainable liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) metamaterials with a surprisingly beneficial trait—the ability to forget. Their article in PNAS describes how, after training LCE arrays to exhibit one behavior, their team was then able to “reset” the material using heat, so it could be retrained for different behaviors.

The annual Postdoc Town Hall is coming up this Thursday, October 9th at 12pm. Postdocs will meet with JFI Director Margaret Gardel to discuss issues affecting postdocs in the JFI.

On Wednesday, October 8th at 4pm there will be a reception in E123 and the GCIS East lobby celebrating the new year and updates to JFI spaces.

Sarah King and collaborators at UChicago, Chicago State University, and University of Illinois Chicago were awarded $4.8 million from the NIH BRAIN Initiative toward developing a novel PEEM microscope designed for brain connectomics.

The annual Physics With A Bang MRSEC open house welcomed 400 visitors of all ages on Dec. 9 to get them excited about science. Attendees explored a hall of interactive demonstrations, toured lab spaces, and watched Heinrich Jaeger and Sidney Nagel’s double act of dazzling science presentations.

Dam Thanh Son and Luca Delacrétaz helped organize a 3-day workshop from Oct. 27-29 on Non-Fermi Liquids: Recent Developments and Future Prospects. The lectures are available on Panopto.

The World in a Grain of Sand: A Symposium on the Collective Behavior of Particles.

In honor of Heinrich Jaeger’s 60th birthday and to celebrate his highly productive and inspiring scientific career, the MRSEC, JFI, and Physics Department hosted a special Symposium on June 2-3. JaegerFest welcomed to campus more than 100 friends, colleagues, staff and administrators both current and retired, as well as many generations of current and former graduate students. Participants enjoyed a full day of talks related to granular physics, and dinner at the local Experimental Station that included a "roast" where everyone could only think of nice things to say.