Constraints and Frustration in Nano-Structured and Bio-Molecular Materials

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The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Brandeis University supports innovative research and education in an exciting subject at the interface between materials science and biology. The major research theme of the Center is to develop fundamental understanding of emergent properties of materials due to constraints similar to those occurring in biological systems, and in understanding the role of constraints in the structure and function of cells and cellular components. This is an interdisciplinary Center with twelve senior investigators from four departments at Brandeis University, and one each from Brown University and Olin College of Engineering. The MRSEC provides a multidisciplinary education for students in physics, chemistry and biology, that will contribute to the workforce at the research frontiers and to the needs of emerging biomaterials industries. Other educational programs include research experiences for undergraduates, and pre-college outreach through teacher training. The MRSEC offers a program targeted to inner-city minority science undergraduates at Brandeis. Scientists at the Center work with the Discovery Museums in Acton, MA, to develop interactive exhibits in the area of biological physics and materials science. The Center provides novel facilities for research in the emerging area of microfluidics and is collaborating with industry to develop microfluidics technologies. Research at the Center is organized as a single Interdisciplinary Research Group with three main thrusts that explore how the addition of constraints typically found in biology - confinement, crowding, and local forces that compete with and sometimes frustrate long range order - leads to emergent properties, in the realms of both structure and dynamics. The research thrusts are structure and dynamics of long polymer molecules, such as DNA, in tightly confined volumes; self-assembly of "chiral" or twisted molecules that lead to unusual structures; and "active matter" composed of organized assemblies of self-powered particles that move in space or oscillate in time.