Description:

P&A Complex Systems Seminar

Featured Speaker

M. Cristina Marchetti

William R. Kenan Professor of Physics
Interim Director of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute
Syracuse University

Active Glasses: From Colloids to Living Cells

Collections of self propelled entities, from living cells to Janus colloids driven by self-catalytic reactions, organize in a rich variety of active fluid and solid states, with novel rheological and mechanical properties. In this talk I will describe the behavior of such "active materials", focusing on the glassy and jammed states that arise at high density. I will discuss minimal models of active Brownian particles with only repulsive interactions that exhibit motility-induced phase separation and a density-driven glass transition when crowding overcomes activity. I will then present a new self-propelled Voronoi model of confluent layers of epithelial cells that shows a transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like glassy state driven by the interplay of cell motility, cortical tension and cell-cell interactions.