(6fc) Designing Functional Soft Materials Using Anisotropic Fluids

My broad research interest is to develop functional materials guided by fundamental approaches from soft-matter physics, interfacial phenomena and statistical mechanics. Of particular importance will be the studies on anisotropic fluids in the context of self-assembly, formation/dynamics of topological defects, flow and interfacial phenomenon. The immediate research themes that I intend to pursue are: 1) Developing new sensor platforms for detection and mechanistic studies of bio-entities including viruses, bacteria, erythrocytes and other biomolecules 2) Achieving directed active transport of colloids and biological cargo using anisotropic fluids and 3) Control and functionalization of topological defects in confined ordered phases as building blocks for complex materials. In the longer term, I intend to lead a collaborative research group advancing our understanding of fundamental physical and biological mechanisms involved in complex soft-material systems that are either- a) selectively responsive to a range of targeted species or b) engineered via mesoscopic building blocks with anisometric interactions resulting in unique properties.

Teaching Interests:

My teaching philosophy regardless of the particular subject matter will be guided by methods to maximize student involvement in the learning process and enabling students to effectively communicate science. I have received training at Georgia Tech as a teaching assistant (TA) on courses including physical chemistry of polymer solutions and a laboratory course on fundamental concepts of materials for which I received the outstanding teaching assistant award. I am comfortable teaching transport phenomena, thermodynamics, reaction kinetics, polymer physics, and colloidal/ interfacial phenomena. I intend to develop a course on scaling concepts for soft matter physics.

Selected Publications (out of 11):

1) K. Nayani, P. Rai, N. Bao, H. Yu, M. Mavrikakis, R. J. Twieg, N. L. Abbott. Liquid Crystals with Interfacial Ordering that Enhances Responsiveness to Chemical Targets. Advanced Materials, 1706707 (2018).

2) R. Mangal, K. Nayani, Y. K. Kim, E. Bukusoglu, U. M Córdova-Figueroa, N. L. Abbott. Active Janus Particles at Interfaces of Liquid Crystals. Langmuir, 33, 10917 (2017).

3) K. Nayani, J. Fu, R. Chang, J. O. Park, M. Srinivasarao. Using chiral tactoids as optical probes to study the aggregation behavior of chromonics. PNAS, 114, 3826 (2017).

4) K. Nayani, R. Chang, J. Fu, P. Ellis, A. F. Nieves, J. O. Park, M. Srinivasarao. Spontaneous emergence of chirality in achiral lyotropic liquid crystals confined to cylinders. Nature Communications, 6, 8067 (2015).