Welcome to the Vaikuntanathan group webpage
We develop and use tools of equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to understand the behavior of complex systems in physical chemistry, soft condensed matter physics, and biophysics. Specific research directions include: Statistical mechanics of driven systems and self assembly out of equilibrium, information processing and control in biology, and studies of aqueous fluctuations in heterogeneous environments with the goal of developing coarse grained models for efficient multiscale chemical and biophysical simulations.
Recent News
- December 2020: Checkout Zhenghan and Laura's new papers (in the publications page !)
- April 2020: The group was just awarded a Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar award !
- March 2020: Zhenghan's paper on rectification of energy and motion in parity violating metamaterials gets accepted for publication at Physical Review X !
- January 2020: Clara's paper on robustness in multicyclic models of biochemical oscillators gets accepted for publication at the Journal of Chemical Physics and get chosen as an Editor's pick !
- December 2019: Clara's paper detailing how energy dissipation can increase robustness of oscillations accepted for publication at Physical Review E !
- December 2019: Paper with Etienne and Takahiro showing how dissipation can be used to control phase transitions and mobility accepted for publication at New Journal of Physics !
- October 2019: Zhenghan's paper on mechanisms for anomalous transport in chiral active liquids chosen as an Editor's pick !
- October 2019: Paper with Laura, Etienne and Takahiro accepted for publication in Physical Review X !
- September 2019: New work with Etienne and Takahiro exploring connection between dissipation and organization submitted !
- September 2019: Zhenghan's new paper on mechanisms for anomalous transport in chiral active liquids submitted !
- September 2019: Clara's new paper investigating robustness in biological clocks submitted!
- September 2019: Nick's paper with Kinjal on the dynamics of tactoid droplets submitted!
- July 2019: Zhenghan's paper posted on the arxiv!
- May 2019: Kinjal's paper with the Gardel group gets accepted for publication in PNAS!
- April 2019: Clara's paper gets highlighted by JCP
- Feb 2019: Nick and Kinjal's paper on screening in dense ionic liquids gets included in the JCP Editors' choice 2018 collection !
- Feb 2019: Group welcomes a new postdoc! Yuqing Qiu will be a joint postdoc along with the Dinner group. Welcome Yuqing !
- Jan 2019: Clara's paper on interfacial fluctuations in driven liquids get picked to be highlighted as an Editor's pick !
- Jan 2019: Clara gets a poster prize for her poster describing her work on oscillations in non-equilibrium biochemical networks. Congrats Clara !
- Jan 2019: Suri gave a talk on dissipation induced transitions in membranes at the Berkeley Statistical Mechanics Meeting
- December 2018: The group was just awarded the NSF CAREER award!
Postdoctoral positions available. Email svaikunt@uchicago.edu for details