Prof. M. Cristina Marchetti – Syracuse University
“Hydrodynamics and soft physics: from complex fluids to living cells”
Historically the term hydrodynamics was synonymous with fluid mechanics and referred to the study of the dynamics of fluids in motion under specified boundary conditions. Today hydrodynamics denotes the description of the collective large-scale dynamics of a wide class of systems, from magnets to crystalline solids, in terms of a small number of conserved and broken symmetry variables. After introducing some of the general ideas behind modern hydrodynamics, I will discuss its application to soft condensed matter systems, using examples from liquid crystal physics and from biology. I will introduce a new class of soft active complex matter to which energy is continuously supplied by internal and external sources. An important example of active matter is the cytoskeleton of cells, a complex network of long biopolymers crosslinked by motor proteins that act like nanomachines, supplying energy to the filament network and controlling its structure and function.