Inaugural Lecture | Vivian Kuperberg & Carla Fernández-Rico
Vivian Kuperberg |
Bias in Prime Numbers
The prime numbers have the curious property that, while they are precisely determined by their definition, they seem to be rather “random" in their distribution. That is to say, they behave in almost the same way as a randomly chosen sequence of integers. The key word “almost" is the focus of this talk! We will discuss what it means for the prime numbers to look random and some surprising ways in which they do not, as well as exploring some open questions in this research area.
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Carla Fernández-Rico |
Designing Structure across Scales in Soft and Biofabricated Materials
From biological tissues to synthetic materials, properties and function often emerge from structures organized across multiple length scales. Understanding how such organization develops from individual building blocks, and how to control it, is a central challenge at the interface of soft matter physics, materials science, and biology. In this talk, I will discuss how colloidal assembly, phase separation, and biological growth can generate and propagate order across scales in soft matter. I will first show how particle curvature directs exotic liquid-crystalline phases, how phase separation creates mechanically robust bicontinuous structures, and how bacterial growth and biomaterial production generate liquid-crystalline order across multiple length scales. These ideas motivate our work at ISTA, where we aim to uncover the physical principles behind the emergence of structural order, and use them to design new, adaptive, and sustainable materials.