Coming up next
2025-12-02 - 12:00 @ Casimir Room
SLAM seminar: Gaurav Gardi (Martin's & Daniela's guest)
Title
Model self-organising systems: disks, droplets and vesicles
Abstract
Self-organisation, a process in which many simple entities organise into globally ordered groups, is ubiquitous in nature: from bird flocks and bacteria collectives to subcellular structures. Due to ubiquity and significance of self-organisation, it is important to understand the physical principles underlying the process using simple model systems. In this talk I will focus on three experimental model systems: magnetic microdisks, self-propelling oil droplets and biomimetic lipid vesicles. First, I will present the diverse collectives of magnetic microdisks caused by in-situ tuning of the pairwise interactions between the disks. Next, I will talk about material agnostic control of an isolated self-propelling droplet and droplet collectives. Finally, I will discuss the emergent motion of giant vesicles under an oscillating electric field. Overall, these experimental systems can act as versatile models for the study of dynamic self-organisation at the microscopic scale. Simultaneously, these systems provide an advance towards the development of microrobot collectives that are robust and adaptive to external perturbations.