SHIRI LAB:
Interfacial & Transport Physics

lab statement

We are a curiosity-driven research group investigating problems at the intersection of physics, biology, and engineering to address the most pressing technological gaps in energy, environment, biotechnology, and forensic sciences. In Interfacial and Transport Physics Lab, we focus on counter-intuitive transport phenomena that occur at the boundary of two different phases, such as solid and liquid or two different materials in both natural and artificial systems at small scales. The key component of IT Physics lab is applying cutting edge experimental techniques to study high dimensional systems where the outcome is impacted by a large number of independent parameters and traditional engineering and physical approaches cannot define the system or may result in unreliable outcomes due to excessive assumptions. For example, in the research with Academy of forensic sciences, we showed that the current simplified approaches in blood pattern analysis to construct the crime scene is not reliable due to vastness of the parameters involved in the system. To develop solutions that can overcome these limitations, we combine high-throughput experimental techniques and data processing strategies to find what known physical laws can be applied or what new physical laws need to be discovered to fully define the system. Our Lab research program involves three thrusts:

1. high throughput experiments and analysis of the drying of complex fluids with an emphasis on biofluid dynamics of biological soft matter,
2. systems of biological active matter and artificial passive particles with an emphasis on understanding how interactions between particles and microorganisms give rise to properties of the community,
3. The underlying physics of bloodstains formations on coated surfaces and fibrous materials with applications to blood pattern analysis in forensic science.