Research

The group's research using computational methods to investigate the behaviour of soft matter systems, such as liquids, liquid crystals, and polymers. These are fascinating systems, combining many of the characteristics of solids (order and structure) and liquids (fluidity), which gives them a wide range of applications ranging from personal care products, foods, and advanced materials such organic electronics. These characteristics are also common to most biological systems and the group's research increasingly focsed on problems in biophysics and the application of biomolecules in technological applications.

Much of our research focuses on the study of soft interfaces, such as those between immiscible fluids (e.g. oil-water or air-water interfaces), membranes, and soft surfaces. These systems are ubiquitous, occurring in many areas of science and technology, and scientifically fascinating. By their very nature these are complex systems, containing many different chemical components and the properties of these systems can vary over nanometre lengthscales, so their behaviour is rooted in molecular scale properties. We're particularly interested in understanding processes such as adsorption, assembly, and synthesis at soft interfaces - essentially trying to understand how we can use these systems to create novel, functional materials.