Alfred Crosby, Editor-in-Chief
University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Alfred J. Crosby is a Professor of Polymer Science & Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Co-Director of the Center for Evolutionary Materials. His research interests lie generally in bio-inspired materials mechanics, especially topics including adhesion, nanoparticle assemblies, gels, thin films, fracture, hierarchical materials, and elastic instabilities. He has received numerous awards, including being a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and the American Physical Society, and his research has been covered extensively in the popular media.
Tommy Angelini, Associate editor
University of Florida, USA
Dr. Thomas E. Angelini is an associate professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. In 2005, Dr. Angelini received his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois, studying biomolecular self-assembly. During his postdoc at Harvard University, he moved into the field of cell mechanics, studying collective cell motion in monolayers. There, he also worked on bacterial biofilm growth and spreading, focusing on forces generated by the biosurfactants and extracellular polysaccharides that bacteria excrete. In 2010, he became an assistant professor at the University of Florida, where he works on self-assembly and collective motion in 2D and 3D cell populations, hydrogel lubrication, and 3D soft matter manufacturing. In 2014, Dr. Angelini received the NSF CAREER award to study the stability and dynamics of tissue cell assemblies embedded in jammed microgels. In July, 2015 he was granted tenure at the University of Florida.
Ewa Gorecka, Associate editor
University of Warsaw, Poland
Ewa Gorecka is a professor at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on the study of liquid crystals, gels and nanoparticles using various X-ray diffraction and microscopic methods to study the structure of these materials at the nanoscale. She is also interested in the mechanisms of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in soft matter. Her latest publications concern the use of X-ray diffraction methods to solve the structure of chiral phases with limited positional order.
Jianbin Huang, Associate editor
Peking University, China
Jianbin Huang is Professor and chief of surfactant and colloid research and development at Peking University. He is interested in the physical chemistry of surfactants, especially in mixed surfactant systems. His group mainly focuses on molecular organized assemblies in aqueous solutions, such as vesicles or micelles, and the formation, molecular structures and phase behaviours of amphiphilic systems. Professor Huang has published over 40 articles in international and Chinese academic journals in the last five years.
Guruswamy Kumaraswamy, Associate editor
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
Guruswamy (Guru) Kumaraswamy is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Guru's research interests are in the area of structure-property relations in polymers and nanocomposites, waste valorization, and sustainable materials. Guru is primarily an experimentalist and his group uses tools such as rheology and small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering to probe materials' microstructure.
Sanat Kumar, Associate editor
Columbia University, USA
Sanat Kumar is currently the Bykhovsky Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University. His research interests are in the field of polymers (nanocomposites, advanced capacitor materials, scattering methods) and biopolymers (protein-surface interactions).
Zhihong Nie, Associate editor
Fudan University, China
Zhihong Nie is a Professor in the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science at Fudan University. Prior to this position, he was a tenured faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park. His current research focuses on molecular and nanoparticle self-assembly, biomedical imaging and delivery, programmable soft materials, and microfluidics. He has received various awards including the NSF CAREER Award and the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award.
Amy Shen, Associate editor
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Amy Shen is a professor in Micro/Bio/Nanofluidics Unit at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan. Her research is focused on microfluidics and rheology of polymeric, surfactant, and colloidal systems with applications in biotechnology and nanotechnology. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (Division of Fluid Dynamics) and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Amy has won numerous awards including the NSF career award and the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. Amy was also a Fulbright Scholar in 2013.
Emanuela Zaccarelli, Associate editor
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Emanuela Zaccarelli is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Complex Systems of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), based at the Physics Department of the Sapienza University of Rome. After graduating in Physics at the same University in 1999, she obtained a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University College of Dublin, Ireland in 2002. Emanuela’s main research interests are on phase behavior and dynamic arrest of complex fluids, including colloids with depletion interactions, star polymers, microgels, clays and patchy particles. She was the first recipient of the Soft Matter Lectureship in 2009 for her studies on gels and glasses in colloidal suspensions.
Xuehua Zhang, Associate editor
University of Alberta, Canada
Professor Xuehua Zhang completed her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and in September 2017 was appointed a Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering at University of Alberta. Her research topics cover surface nanobubbles and nanodroplets, microwetting, surface forces, spontaneous emulsification, microextraction, self-assembly of colloids, evaporation and dissolution of multicomponent droplets, and bubble dynamics in catalytic reactions.
Lorna Dougan, Editorial board member
University of Leeds, UK
Lorna Dougan is currently a Professor of Physics at the University of Leeds based at the University of Leeds in the School of Physics and Astronomy, working on soft matter and biological physics. She currently holds a UKRI Frontier Research Fellowship (Horizon Europe guarantee for the European Research Council Consolidator Fellowship). Her research group is focused on the multiscale structure and mechanics of folded protein hydrogels and liquids and complex fluids.