ODD Crystals

Experimental Soft & Active Matter Lab

We use particle-resolved real-space imaging techniques to uncover how structure, defects, geometry, and nonequilibrium driving govern behavior in soft and active materials - spanning both collective phenomena and single-particle dynamics.

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Selected recent publications

Reentrant melting of scarred odd crystals, Nat. Comm. 2026
Shape-drive jamming-unjamming of cell-mimics, Nat. Comm. 2024
Colloidal heat engine in a viscoelastic bath, PRL 2023
Overcoming power-efficiency trade-off in a micro heat engine, Nat. Comm. 2023
Uncovering order in disordered systems, PNAS 2023
Surface strain-mediated interactions in colloidal heteroepitaxy, PRL 2022
Melting on a sphere, PNAS 2022
Glassy dynamics of active granular ellipsoids, PRL 2022
Colloidal heat engine in engineered reservoirs, Nat. Comm. 2021
Stereo-selective interactions in chiral active ellipsoids, Sci. Adv. 2021
Devitrification of a colloidal glass, Nat. Phys. 2021

Funding

Media coverage of our research

Cell-mimics chosen as Biomedical Picture of the Day (July 16th, 2024)
Indian scientists crack 'cellular unjamming' puzzle - The Telegraph