Atomic Movers and Shakers

ICTP's third Colloquium of 2012, held on 12 January, featured a lecture by Ramin Golestanian of Oxford University's Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics.

The title of his talk was "Active soft matter: From molecular swimmers to colloidal supernovas". Golestanian examined the possibilities of constructing micro- and nano-scale molecular swimmers that can self-propel, and then talked about the importance of studying their collective behaviours. He explained that an understanding of the individual and collective behaviour of active particles is one of the grand challenges of non-equilibrium statistical physics.

A video of his lecture will soon be available.