The Driscoll lab is a soft matter physics lab in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University, and our research lies at the junction between soft-matter physics and fluid dynamics. We use advanced imaging techniques to study a wide range of materials, such as flowing suspensions, fracturing gels, and active colloids.
Our focus is to understand, characterize, and control soft materials. Soft materials, such as gels, pastes, and suspensions, are completely disordered, highly nonlinear, and fundamentally out-of-equilibrium; to understand these materials requires the development of new insights and innovative techniques. We identify model systems for complex soft materials, and then exploit their simplicity to understand complex material response. We use emergent structure formation as a powerful new tool to probe soft materials. This approach enables new measurements of dynamical properties, and provides an understanding of how these dynamics are coupled to a material’s microscale structure.