Research
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Quasicrystalline Medieval Islamic Architectural Tilings
Medieval Islamic designers used girih tiles to create decagonal patterns embodying math not understood in the West until the 1970s.
Colloidal Gelation
Colloidal gels form when the process of liquid-gas phase separation undergoes kinetic arrest.
Earliest Compound Machine
Ancient Chinese craftsmen first used precision compound machinery to decorate jade rings with the spiral or Archimedes centuries before he lived.
Colloids on the Space Station
Observing colloidal phase transitions in low-gravity aboard the International Space Station enables long-term observation of new phenomena.
Earliest Use of Diamond
Neolithic craftsmen in China used diamond to polish sapphire-bearing stone axes in 2500 BC, millennia before people were thought to be using diamond.
Fast, Accurate Particle Location
High-performance imaging software and methods to determine rapidly and precisely the 3D positions of many colloidal particles in microscope images.
Confocal Differential Dynamic Microscopy
Collecting light-scattering-like data using confocal microscopy.
Natural Quasicrystals
Icosahedrite, the first natural example of a quasicrystalline mineral with forbidden five-fold symmetry, recovered from a Russian meteorite.
Low-cost detection of contamination and disease
Rapid, low-cost, accurate detection of chemical contamination and microbial pathogens for the developing world.
Drying Complex Suspensions
Complex mixtures of immiscible fluids with colloids have important applications in areas such as paints and protective coatings, especially when drying.
Biodiversity and Incompleteness
Accounting for the incompleteness of the fossil record removes the artifactual “speed limit” on the recovery of biodiversity following mass extinction.