Research

Current projects include:

Recent Highlights

Priyanka Kumari received AMLCI Alfred Saupe Fellowship 2024: For outstanding graduate students working on physics or material sciences of liquid crystals. Congratulations!		Chiral Ground States of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals has been published by Priyanka Kumari et al in Science.
Vanessa Jiron, a graduate student in Oleg D. Lavrentovich’s group, presented her research on 'Dynamic Photocontrol of Active Droplet Trajectories in a Cholesteric' on Materials Day 2024 at AMLCI, Kent. April 6, 2024		Kamal Thapa, a graduate student in Oleg D. Lavrentovich’s group, presented his research on 'Confinement and Magnetic Field Effect on Chiral Ferroelectric Nematic in Grandjean-Cano Wedge Cell' on Materials Day 2024 at AMLCI, Kent. April 6, 2024
Priyanka Kumari, a graduate student in Oleg D. Lavrentovich’s group, presented her research on 'Chiral Ground States of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals' on Materials Day 2024 at AMLCI, Kent. April 5, 2024		Olena Iadlovska won the Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) -International Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS) Liquid Crystal Research Excellence Gold Award. Olena performed a groundbreaking exploration of light propagation through the new liquid crystal structure, the so-called oblique helicoidal (OH) state of a cholesteric (Ch) or ChOH. Her exploration of the optical properties of ChOH has the potential to impact the field of augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), as evidenced by the fact that a research grant from Oculus supported a part of her Ph.D. work. Congratulations Dr. Olena!
Hend M. Baza successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation on "Dynamics of Liquid Crystal Based Active Matter". Congratulations Dr. Baza! January 10, 2024		Lydia Vander Ark, an REU-Summer 2023 student, presents her research on liquid crystal materials in Oleg D. Lavrentovich’s group. July 26, 2023
Mojtaba Rajabi successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on "Dynamics of active colloids in liquid crystal environment". Congratulations!		Ferroelectric nematic liquids with conics has been published by Priyanka Kumari et al in Nature Communications and featured on editors’ highlights webpage.
Runa Koizumi successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation on "Topology and geometry guided structures in equilibrium and out of equilibriium LCs". Congratulations!		Lab Pumpkin 2022, showing some nice features of the ferronematic.
Olena Iadlovska successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation on "Electro-Optics of Oblique Helicoidal Cholesterics". Congratulations!		Taras Turiv, recent Ph.D. graduate, was awarded the Glenn H. Brown award from the International Liquid Crystal Society for his Ph.D. dissertation on "Dynamics of Living and Inanimate Microparticles Controlled by Nematic Liquid Crystal". Congratulations!
Toroidal nuclei of columnar lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals coexisting with an isotropic phase has been published by Runa Koizumi et al in Soft Matter and highlighted at the cover page.		Turaba Rahman, undergraduate Physics major, joined the group during summer 2022 as part of the SURE (Summer Undergraduate Research Experience) program. Her research was on "Effect of substrate polarity and electric field on the capillary flow of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal". Her research abstract got accepted at the 14th Undergraduate Research symposium in West Virginia University. Congratulations, and well done!
Congratulations to Priyanka for winning the AMLCI Image Contest. The picture shows conic section textures in an NF material where the bottom surface is degenerate and the top surface is free.		Runa, Mojtaba, and Hend received the best oral presentation award at the 36th Annual Graduate Research Symposium at Kent State.