Conference: 2024 Colloidal, Macromolecular and Polyelectrolyte Solutions Gordon Research Conference and Seminar

Colloids, macromolecules, and polyelectrolytes serve as building blocks for biological and synthetic materials with microstructures that are often far from equilibrium. Such complexity and diversity give rise to unique properties with endless potential for innovation. Recent advances in characterizing and precisely controlling their structure and properties are enabling a wide array of applications from novel delivery vehicles to green materials to living and non-living systems that may provide insights into the origins of life. Due to the intricate nature of these systems, their study requires a unique approach involving a combination of experiments and theoretical analyses. The 2024 GRC on Colloidal, Macromolecules and Polyelectrolyte Solutions aims to explore the innovation of these materials and techniques for their characterization, focusing on engineering diverse soft matter systems. This conference serves as a forum for interdisciplinary collaboration and idea sharing among scientists from various fields such as engineering, materials science, physics, and chemistry. The study of colloidal, macromolecular, and polyelectrolyte solutions plays a crucial role in addressing various important questions in the field of soft matter and complex fluids. These questions involve the correlation between thermodynamics, structure, and transport of biological and synthetic materials. The remarkable fact that DNA, RNA, and proteins are all polyelectrolytes, and that globular proteins and their complexes are colloidal in nature and perform important functions in cells, highlights the immense physical and chemical complexity of these systems, and their linkages to fundamental scientific questions, as well as their practical applications in areas such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and chemical manufacturing. The sustained interest in this topic over the course of several decades demonstrates the enthusiasm and importance that researchers place on this field. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.