Soft Matter  is pleased to welcome Patricia Bassereau, Masatsugu Shimomura, John Dutcher and Phillip Messersmith as new members of the Editorial Board.

Patricia Bassereau

Patricia Bassereau is currently Directrice de Recherche, CNRS at the Curie Institute in Paris. After spending seven years in Montpellier (GDPC) working on the structure of surfactant-based phases and a year as a visiting scientist at the Almaden IBM Center (San Jose, USA) working on the structure of thin polymer films, she moved in 1993 to the Curie Institute. She initially investigated the interactions of soluble proteins with polymer monolayers. Over the last 12 years she has been working in the field of "physics for cell biology". She has developed a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the role of lipid membranes in important cellular functions such as intracellular trafficking, endo/exocytosis,  transmembrane ion transport ("active membranes"), or cell adhesion. 

Masatsugu Shimomura

Professor Shimomura graduated from Kyushu University in 1980. From 1980 to 1985 he held an Assistant Professor position at Professor Toyoki Kunitake's laboratory, for chemical synthesis of photofunctional bilayer membranes. In 1982 he joined Professor H. Ringsdorf's laboratory, Mainz University, where he studied surface chemistry and Langmuir-Blodgett films. In 1985 he moved to Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology as an Associate Professor, where he started to develop novel polymer thin films, so-called Polyion Complex LB films. From 1987 to 1988 he stayed in Professor Sackmann's laboratory, Technical University of Munich, to study in-situ observation of surface monolayer by epifluorescence microscopy. He was a professor of Hokkaido University between 1993 and 2007. From 2001 to 2006 he was the Director of the Nanotechnology Research Center. From 1999 to 2007, he concurrently held a team leader position of RIKEN Institute. Now he is a  Professor of the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials and a Principal Investigator of the WPI Research Center of Tohoku University. Current projects of his research group focus on bottom-up nanotechnology based on self-organization, biomedical application of patterned polymer materials and novel preparation of polymer nanoparticles. He is a member of the Japan Chemical Society, the Japan Applied Physical Society and the American Chemical Society. He is now on the board of trustees of the Polymer Society of Japan. He received the Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) award for Creative Work in 2000. 

John Dutcher

Dr Dutcher is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Soft Matter Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph. He also serves as Director of the Centre for Food and Soft Materials Science at the University of Guelph, and as Theme Leader for the Advanced Foods and Materials Network, a Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence. Dr Dutcher's research focuses on the physics of polymers, biopolymers and bacteria at surfaces and in thin films. He is the recipient of an Ontario Premier's Research Excellence Award, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is the author of over 80 papers cited more than 1800 times, three book chapters, co-editor of a book entitled Soft Materials: Structure and Dynamics and Guest Editor of a special issue of the Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics entitled "Dynamics of Confined Polymers". Dr Dutcher has been invited to speak about his research at a large number of international scientific meetings and research institutions. He has a broad network of collaborators from different disciplines, including chemists, microbiologists, materials scientists and food scientists. He is currently supervising and co-supervising eight PDFs and Research Associates, eight graduate students and two undergraduate students. 

Phillip Messersmith 

Phillip B. Messersmith, PhD, is a professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. He earned his B.S. degree in life sciences in 1985 and his Ph.D. degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1993. Before coming to Northwestern University, Dr Messersmith was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, and was a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1994-1997). Dr Messersmith's research interests include biological adhesion, bioinspired synthesis of materials, polymeric biomaterials, tissue engineering, biomineralization, self-assembly and nanostructured materials. Current research projects include studies of biological adhesives, including mussel adhesive proteins and gecko adhesives, the design of biomimetic adhesive polymers, development of novel biomaterials for regenerative medicine, and antifouling polymer surfaces. His awards and honors include young investigator awards from the Whitaker Foundation and NIH, and a MERIT award from the NIH. Dr Messersmith is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a member of the editorial boards of Soft Matter, Nanomedicine, Biointerphases and Biomedical Materials.