Active matter is any collection of materials or systems composed of individual units that can move on their own, thanks to self-propulsion or autonomous motion. They can be of any size—think clouds of bacteria in a petri dish, or schools of fish.
Roman Grigoriev is mostly interested in the emergent behaviors in active matter systems made up of units on a molecular scale—tiny systems that convert stored energy into directed motion, consuming energy as they move and exert mechanical force.
"Active matter systems have garnered significant attention in physics, biology, and materials science due to their unique properties and potential applications," Grigoriev, a professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech, explains.
"Researchers are exploring how active matter can be harnessed for tasks like designing new materials with tailored properties, understanding the behavior of biological organisms, and even developing new approaches to robotics and autonomous systems," he says.
But that's only possible if scientists learn how the microscopic units making up active matter interact, and whether they can affect these interactions and thereby the collective properties of active matter on the macroscopic scale.
Grigoriev and his research colleagues have found a potential first step by developing a new model of active matter that generated new insight into the physics of the problem. They detail their methods and results in a study published in Science Advances, "Physically informed data-driven modeling of active nematics."
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