Non-equilibrium statistical physics of complex materials - a story on cement, bacteria and catheters.

Many biological and artificial materials and devices operate under non-equilibrium conditions. To optimize their design for manufacturing, performance, and durability, it is critical to understand the fundamental underlying physical principles governing their functionality and performance. In this talk, I will present findings from my research that reveals mechanisms and design principles that apply to complex systems such as bacteria colonies, cement paste, and catheters devices. Specifically, I will talk about the connection of bacteria motion with fractional-order calculus in bounded domains due to power-law statistics and the generalized Central Limit Theory. Then I switch to a new theory ⏤ nanofluidic salt trapping ⏤ proposed for the cement free-thaw damage problem, based on electrokinetics and cement amorphous pore network structure. These two topics are then integrated into a newly proposed manufacturing protocol to exploit activity-assisted assembly to control pore size distribution and network connectivity. Finally, I will discuss geometric design principles of medical catheters, based on our investigations of bacteria upstream swimming inside a channel and physics-informed deep learning approach.