In nature, actin bundling is a key capability that enables cells to apply substantial forces to overcome obstacles. Similarly, in the design of actin-based materials, the ability to bundle semi-rigid filaments into bundles of higher rigidity is a key step toward building more complex architectures. For this reason, developing a toolbox for controlling bundling is an important goal of our IRG. The approaches we have developed for controlling the bundling of actin filaments on a microscopic level allow us to construct actin-based materials with tunable mechanical properties.

The artist residency program at the Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials enables artists to work with CDCM faculty to create contemporary art installations that demonstrate emerging science and technology, bringing fundamental concepts in science to the public in very tangible, engaging ways.

Connecting Research and Education At TExas (CREATE) is a partnership program established between UT Austin and Austin Community College (ACC) whose goal is to increase retention of community college students in STEM. CREATE works to achieve this goal by building relationships between ACC students and UT Austin researchers through a fall/spring seminar series held at ACC that features UT faculty speakers and a 9-week summer research program that pairs ACC students with research mentors at UT Austin.

Flat bands have been associated with excoct effects in materials, such as strong correlations, superconductivity, or the fractional quantum Hall effect. In bulk materials they are difficult to be isolated form other electronic states. In addition, they are often at non-accessible energies. In this work, Schoop and Bernevig collaborated to access flat bands in a new material using soft-chemical modification of a known materials.

The 2024 Holiday Science Lecture “Science by Candlelight” was held at Princeton University on December 7, 2024 with over 530 people attending two lectures at McDonnell Hall. Howard Stone led the lecture, and was joined by Julia Mikhailova, Angie Miller (chemistry department demonstrator) and other PCCM researchers (including graduate students and postdocs).

The Harvard MRSEC engages K-12 teachers and students through the science of everyday materials. Led by former HS teacher Strangfeld, the MRSEC hosts workshops for teachers and K-12 students that are modeled on the undergraduate Science and Cooking course developed by Weitz and Brenner, which is now led by Sörensen. In February 2025, Strangfeld and Sörensen, with the help of MRSEC researchers, piloted a 4-day program at Harvard for high school students during school break.

Aligned liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft materials that exhibit reversible actuation akin to human muscles when thermally cycled above their nematic-to-isotropic transition temperature. Lewis and collaborators studied the effects of LCE ink composition, nozzle geometry, and printing parameters on director alignment.

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors are promising materials for next-generation electronic and iontronic devices. As a consequence of their ultrathin dimensions, 2D materials offer the opportunity for continued device scaling while avoiding the short-channel effects that hinder bulk semiconductors.

Northwestern University IRG-1 has identified novel protein building blocks that form high-aspect ratio structures with genetic-level programmability and tunability.

Electronic nematicity, the spontaneous breaking of crystalline rotational symmetry, has been discovered in several strongly correlated electronic systems, including high Tc superconductors. Recently, several studies have suggested that the charge density wave in the kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5 breaks rotational symmetry—an intriguing possibility, as it would be a rare example of “three-state Potts nematicity,” in which there are three possible orientations in a hexagonal lattice. Here, we report that  CsV3Sb5 is probably not nematic, but it is very sensitive to isotropic strain.