Nanoparticle Transport in Crowded, Confined Media, Spring 2022 Seminar

This event features Jacinta C. Conrad, Frank M. Tiller Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston, who will talk about “Nanoparticle Transport in Crowded, Confined Media”, as part of the Lehigh University Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering's Spring 2022 Seminar Series. 

 

Transport of nanoscale particles through crowded, confined matrices is essential for drug delivery, diagnostic assays, and processing of nanocomposite materials. Because nanoparticles are comparable in size to heterogeneities within these matrices, their transport properties may be altered by local fluid properties and nearby confining surfaces. I will discuss our recent experiments and simulations of nanoparticle transport in three settings: polymer solutions, which model viscoelastic liquids; supercooled and glassy colloidal liquids, which model crowded suspensions; and porous media. Understanding of the coupling of nanoparticles dynamics to liquid relaxations and geometric confinement will lead to better control over the spreading of nanoparticles through complex, heterogeneous materials.

 

Jacinta C. Conrad is a physical scientist studying transport and dynamics within soft, complex materials and matrices. Using a broad range of microscopy, rheology, scattering, and computational methods, her group seeks to understand how microscale particles, including colloids, nanoparticles, bacteria, viruses, and proteins, explore and/or transport through confined and crowded environments containing polymers, macromolecules, or other dispersed species. Insights gained from fundamental studies of these non-equilibrium processes inform the design of new materials for preventing fouling and corrosion, for remediating environmental damage, and for sensitively diagnosing disease. She earned an SB in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and MA and PhD degrees in Physics from Harvard. She worked as a postdoctoral associate in MatSe at Illinois before starting her faculty position at the University of Houston (UH). Currently, she is Frank M. Tiller Professor of Chemical Engineering at UH, the Chair-Elect of the American Physical Society Division of Soft Matter (DSOFT), and an Associate Editor for ACS Applied Nano Materials, and was named a Fellow of the Society of Rheology in 2021.