Workshop Announcement

Soft Condensed Matter: Physical and Biological Aspects

At the Australian National University, Canberra, October 16-29, 2000

This workshop is held under the auspices of the National Institute for Theoretical Physics and the ANU Centre for Theoretical Physics. It will have a broad scope so as to be accessible and of interest to all soft matter researchers both in Australia and internationally. Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:
  1. Polymers, including biopolymers
  2. Foams
  3. Liquid Crystals
  4. Wetting
  5. Biomineralisation and gel-mineral systems
  6. Computational Physics
International Invited Speakers include (in no particular order):
Phil Pincus, T. Aste, Siefried Dietrich, Juanma Garcia Ruiz, Yasuo Suzuki and Sriram Ramiswamy
The meeting will also include several Australian and New Zealand invited speakers. The talks will be held in the Seminar Room of the Link Building of the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering.
Schedule of Talks:
1st Week:

Monday October 16:
Session Chair: David Williams
9:00 Siegfried Dietrich: Wetting of Structured Substrates.
9:45 Roger Horn: Measurements of deformation of fluid interfaces due to surface and hydrodynamic forces.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50-11:20 Hugo Christenson: Confinement Effects on Freezing and Melting.

Tuesday October 17:
Session Chair: Stjepan Marcelja
9:00 Phil Pincus: Physics of Charged Surfaces in Aqueous Media.
9:45 Yasuo Suzuki: Ribbon Polymers and Polymers at Surfaces.
10:30 Tea Break.
10:50- 11:35 Peter Harrowell: Structure and Dynamics at the Onset of Rigidity in a Glass-Forming Liquid.

Wednesday October 18:
Session Chair: Roger Horn
9:00 Siegfried Dietrich: Fluctuation Induced Forces in Liquids.
9:45 Toby Allen: Microscopic and Macroscopic Modelling of Biological Ion Channels.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50 -11:20 Barry Ninham: Dispersion Forces: Implications in Physical Chemistry and Biology.

Thursday October 19:
Session Chair: Rob Sok
9:00 Phil Pincus: Ion Partitioning in Aqueous Media.
9:45 Edie Sevick: Dynamics and Statics of Polymer Squashing.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50-11:20 Stjepan Marcelja: The Mechanism of the 'Secondary Hydration Force'

Friday October 20:
REST DAY

Sunday October 22:
BBQ 1pm at Barry Ninham's House, 18 Booth Cresent, Cook.


2nd Week:
Monday October 23:
Session Chair: Vince Craig
9:00 Phil Attard: Adhesion and visco-elastic deformation of particles.
9:45 Greg Warr: Surfactant Adsorbed Layer Structure at Solid/Solution Interfaces.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50-11:35 Simon Biggs: Surfactants and Polymers at Interfaces studied using Atomic Force Microscopy and Optical Reflectometry.
11:35-12:05 Tim Senden: Nanomechanical work on small molecular assemblies.

Tuesday October 24:
Session Chair: Tim Senden
9:00 Denis Evans: Statistical Mechanics of Systems Far From Equilibrium, as Studied by Molecular Dynamics
9:45 Hugh Brown: Adventures in Adhesion.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50-11:35 Raoul Zana: On the mechanism of surfactant-assisted formation of organized mesoporous silica: a fluorescence probe study.
11:35-12:05 Vince Craig: Hydrodynamic Slip at Solid Surfaces.

Wednesday October 25:
Session Chair: Steven Hyde
9:00 Sriram Ramaswamy: Fluctuations and Ordered Phases of Self-Propelled Particles: Living Liquid Crystals.
9:45 Juanma Garcia-Ruiz: Biomineralization.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50-11:35 Tomaso Aste: Topological Maps in Foams and Granular Matter.
11:35-12:15 Jan Hoh: The role of unstructured proteins in biological systems.

Thursday October 26:
Session Chair: Mark Knackstedt
9:00 Sriram Ramaswamy: Order and Fluctuations in Sedimentation.
9:45 Tomaso Aste: Slow Dynamics and Disorder in Cellular Structures.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50-11:35 Simon Cox: New Frontiers in Foam Drainage
11:35-12:20 Brian Gunning and Steve Hyde: Hyperbolic Surfaces: Biological Implications.

Friday October 27:
Session Chair: David Williams
9:00 David Jans: Biological applications of polymers: using poly-lysine to facilitate gene therapy.
9:45 Agur Sevink: Understanding modulated self-organisation in complex amphiphilic systems.
10:30 Tea Break
10:50-11:20 Mark Knackstedt: Topology and Two-phase Flow.
End of Programme
(Still to be scheduled: Bostrom, Hoh)


Our aim is to have a relaxed meeting, light on formal seminars, with lots of time free for informal discussions. We aim to have a good cross-section of reseachers using theory, simulation and experiment. Attendees will be provided with office space in the Institute of Advanced Studies at ANU. The meeting is open to all those interested in the subject.
There is no registration fee for this workshop .
Click Here to get to the ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM .
For details regarding accomodation please contact the Departmental Administrator in the Department of Theoretical Physics at ANU (adm105@rsphysse.anu.edu.au).
For details regarding the academic content of the workshop please contact David Williams (drw110@rsphy9.anu.edu.au) in the Applied Mathematics Department .