Research Description
W. Benjamin Rogers studies how soft materials self-organize when they are driven by processes that consume energy. In this project, his team will build two DNA-based synthetic systems that form liquid-like droplets far from equilibrium: one in which light induces local heating, and another in which enzymes create chemical gradients. Using optical microscopy, microfluidics, and modeling, the team will test how these driving forces affect droplet growth, coarsening, and dissolution in ways that do not occur in equilibrium systems.
Research Impact
Professor Rogers’s work could help show how living systems maintain organized droplets that do not simply merge into larger ones over time. It may also provide design rules for engineering synthetic soft materials that can be controlled to assemble, reorganize, or remain stable under nonequilibrium conditions, while offering simpler experimental models for studying the behavior of biomolecular condensates.
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related links
Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative
Science
Brandeis University, Martin A. Fisher School of Physics
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