Dana Hassan – ActiveMatter ITN

Round Table Discussion on Fluids and Active Matter

A screenshot taken during the round table discussion of 13 September 2021.

In our third round table we had the pleasure of Gareth Alexander, Ignacio Pagonabarraga and Julia Yeomans as our guest panellists. This time the overall theme was “Fluids and Active Matter” and hosted by Chun-Jen Chen, Davide Breoni, Danne van Roon, Audrey Nsamela, Dana Hassan and Sandrine Heijnen.

It started out with an interesting discussion regarding the motivation to get in and what amazes them the most in the field of active matter. Here it became clear that active systems can have their passive counterparts, and works for easy transitions from active to passive systems, but at the same time, such active systems still have the potential to answer many fundamental questions. From this topic, one of the key takeaways was that the project that you are currently working on should be the subject that amazes you the most.

The next topic that stood as the centre of the discussion was turbulence. Turbulence is an interesting phenomenon where a lot of things are still unknown. The intriguing concept here was that real, or fluid-dynamical, turbulence is different from active turbulence. As a clarification, Julia Yeomans introduced the following comparison. Real turbulence is observed in a waterfall where the energy follows the Kolmogorov cascade. In active turbulence, the energy originates from the individual particles moving and does not follow the same energy trend as real turbulence.

As one of the final topics, we were wondering what are the main takeaways regarding active nematics, especially if it’s not your field. We got it set for you in four points. One, it is fundamentally unstable and therefore creates flows. Point number two, motile topological effects. Number three, the potential connection it has to biological systems and the ability to explain similar processes. Finally, number four, the fact that we are looking at non-equilibrium systems.

Round Table Discussion on Theoretical Aspects of Collective Behaviour

A screenshot taken during the round table discussion of 9 September 2021.

Today the second round table of the Initial Training on Theoretical Methods took place, entitled “Theoretical aspects of collective behavior”. The round table was hosted by ESRs David, Jesus, Ojus, Carolina, Alireza, Dana, and Umar. The inspiring group of speakers included Margarida Telo da Gama, Fernando Peruani, Nicoletta Gnan, and Claudio Maggi.

Many matters were discussed, ranging from the limits of collective behavior and the role of communication in emergence, to the compatibility between experiments and theory of collective behavior. Examples can be found in both natural and artificial environments, even combinations with varying degrees of active motion. This adds to the challenge of defining valuable, even if not accurate, models. At the core, collective behavior highlights how the system can be much more than just the sum of individual entities.

The Active Matter network has a new logo !

With a joint effort of the ESR students, a new logo for the ActiveMatter website was designed. The idea started as a handdrawing on a piece of paper and was quickly adapted to a better version with drawing softwares. More than 15 logos were suggested and submitted to a vote. The competition was fierce but we all came to agree on one of them and we are happy to present you the new official logo of the ITN ActiveMatter !

Round Table Discussion on: Optics, Spectroscopy, Micro and Nanofabrication, and Nanotribology

On Tuesday 23 March the fourth round table of the initial training on experimental methods for active matter took place. The topic of the round table was “Optics, Spectroscopy, Micro and Nanofabrication, and Nanotribology”, and the discussion was led by Ayten Gülce Bayram , David Bronte Ciriza, Dana Hassan, Carolina van Baalen and Jesús Manuel Antúnez Domínguez.
The panelists included Maria Grazia Donato, Pietro Gucciardi, Antonino Foti, Shivaprakash Ramakrishna, and Felix Holzner.

The importance of the topic of the round table to the field of active matter was motivated by the panelists from different perspectives. The discussion ranged from the main differences and challenges that come along with working on the micro- and nanoscale, to how changing the dimensions of your system allows one to change the properties of a system’s response, as well as the challenges involved in bringing a product idea to the market. The main conclusion was that the nanoscale is exciting, but the smaller you get, the greater the challenge.

Round Table Discussion on: Living Active Matter

As part of the experimental training, a second round-table discussion took place yesterday, 18 March 2021. The event centered around a discussion on the topic of « Living Active Matter » and featured four invited guests, all physicists, who have studied different topics and length scales relevant to living systems. The invited panel was composed of Aidan Brown from University of Edinburgh, Salima Rafai who works at CNRS in Grenoble, Eric Clément from PMMH-ESPCI in Paris and Benjamin Friedrich from TU Dresden, and was conducted by six of the students attending the training: Audrey Nsamela, David Bronte, Jérémie Bertrand, Ojus Satish Bagal, Daniela Peréz Guerrero and Dana Hassan, who first introduced each guest and then asked selected questions. From molecules and cells to tissues, organisms and populations, each guest had a particular expertise which made for a wide-ranging and interesting discussion.

A question on the evolutionary role of self-propulsion was met with an answer from Dr Brown, who, as obvious as it may seem, pointed out that organisms become “active” when whatever they need to survive is not in their immediate surroundings and must be found elsewhere. When Dr Rafai suggested that the micro-swimmers she studied were not converting their energy to motion optimally, Dr Brown pointed out that biological systems are optimized only in the sense that they are versatile and can adapt to a large number of situations or physical parameters, which is not something that can be captured by a single experiment. This goes to show that, when given the same set of facts, physicists and biologists will often interpret their observations differently, and that discussions between the two disciplines can be fruitful.

Dr Friedrich pointed out that the inherent complexity of biology was such that you could sometimes make progress by just looking and writing down how the processes unfold. He went on to explain that one of the bigger challenges biologists face is that many of these processes occurr below the resolution limit of the microscopes (the “diffraction barrier”) and can therefore not be observed by regular optical microscopes. Several panelists are excited about the coming of newly-designed, ground-breaking microscopes; devices that would use entangled photons to break the diffraction barrier. These new technologies could help not only the field of biology, but also encourage physicists and chemists to collaborate and create models of previously undiscovered mechanisms at the smaller scales. Deep learning is another tool that was alluded to by Dr Rafai as something to look forward to for image reconstruction.

Overall, we found the discussion very productive and we would like to thank once more the panelists for their insights and willingness to participate!