Our research interest lies in gaining a fundamental understanding of soft materials physics and then applying this knowledge to the development of functional structures for applications such as drug delivery, photonic materials, cell encapsulation and chemical sensing. Soft condensed matter are materials that are easily deformable by external stresses such as mechanical, electric or magnetic fields, or even by thermal fluctuations. Examples of these materials include colloidal suspensions, complex fluids, polymer solutions, emulsions and foams. Current projects in our group include porous nanoparticle microshells for chemical sensing, fabrication of core-shell structures from double emulsions, and cell encapsulation in hydrogels.
