Examples of materials engineered by nature and ways human engineers can mimic the processes that create natural materials will be discussed at a free public lecture July 12 at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign physics Professor Jennifer A. Lewis will present "Mimicking Nature via Directed Materials Assembly " at 7 p.m. in Duane Physics, room G1B20.
Lewis' presentation is part of the seventh annual Boulder Summer School for Condensed Matter and Material Physics, which is hosted by CU-Boulder and supported by a $1.36 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The school runs from June 26 to July 21. This year's theme is "Physics of Soft Matter: Complex Fluids and Biological Materials."
Lewis is Illinois' Hans Thurnauer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and is director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.
Lewis' talk will introduce examples of how materials are engineered in nature with extraordinary compositional and structural precision. Natural engineering produces a desired functionality, such as high-strength or novel optical properties. Lewis will discuss possible applications in engineering of structural materials, photonic materials and microlens arrays.
The Boulder Summer School enables advanced graduate students to work at the frontiers of science and technology by exposing them to a range of concepts, techniques and applications much broader than any single graduate program or postdoctoral apprenticeship can provide, according to CU-Boulder physics Professor Leo Radzihovsky.
Radzihovsky co-founded the school with Steven Girvin of Yale University, Matthew Fisher of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Andy Millis of Columbia University.
Each year the school invites 65 students from all over the world who are working on the school's current topic. The students are brought to Boulder for a four-week study of advanced materials presented by 20 to 25 international scientific experts in the field.
The Boulder Summer School is supported by the National Science Foundation, with additional funding provided by CU-Boulder, and meets annually at CU-Boulder in July.
For more information about the July 12 lecture call I.J. Frame at (303) 492-3367.