## Sharon Gerbode

Assistant Professor (2012)
PhD Cornell
Soft condensed matter
Office
Keck 1233
Phone
909-607-7893 (office)
909-621-8024 (department)
909-621-8887 (fax)
E-Mail
gerbode@hmc.edu
Page
http://www.physics.hmc.edu/~gerbode/wiki/

In introductory physics courses, we learn about an idealized frictionless world of rigid bodies and smooth surfaces. Yet the physics of everyday life is complex: soft, sticky, squishy and often far from equilibrium. Many materials, ranging from biological tissues to piles of sand evade traditional classifications as either liquid or solid. Further incorporation of such soft matter into modern engineering requires a deeper understanding of these materials. Soft matter physics explores the fundamental physical principles that underlie the complexity of such systems, and has opened up an exciting new class of questions with applications to industry, biology and materials science. The Gerbode Lab focuses on two areas at the forefront of experimental soft matter physics: (i) **colloids** — where microscopic solid particles suspended in a fluid self-assemble into thermodynamic phases; and (ii) **adaptive biomaterials** — where soft microstructured biological tissues actuate complex motions. Visit our research website _ to learn more.

### Recent Publications

 Caitlin Ellen Cash, Jeremy Wang, Maya Maria Martirossyan, Kemper Ludlow, Alejandro E. Baptista, Nina M. Brown, Eli Joseph Weissler, Jatin Abacousnac, and Sharon Gerbode Local Melting Attracts Grain Boundaries in Colloidal Polycrystals Physical Review Letters 120 (2018) 018002. John R. Savage, Stefan F. Hopp, Rajesh Ganapathy, Sharon Gerbode, Andreas Heuer, and I. Cohen Entropy-Driven Crystal Formation on Highly Strained Substrates Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2013) 9301-9304.