Welcome!

How can materials dynamically control or remodel their own internal structure to affect their behavior? How can the statistics of structural disorder be biased to produce non-trivial properties? How can one discover novel equilibrium and non-equilibrium assembly mechanisms in highly parameterized systems? Questions like these are a necessary step in the development of synthetic biology, where non-biological materials and nano-scale machines operate with the complexity and functionality found only in biology.

Towards this end, the Goodrich Group uses computational and theoretical tools to discover basic soft matter principles that could one day lead to new functional materials as well as deepen our understanding of complex biological matter. The goal is to first understand general or even universal mechanisms that are not overly sensitive to the details of a given experimental system, and then work with experimentalists to test these ideas in practice. The group deploys and develops a number of numerical techniques, from molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo to machine learning and automatic differentiation. Specifically, the researchers are at the forefront in the development of trainable physics models, which provide a new and powerful way to explore high-dimensional systems and discover complex, non-trivial phenomena.

News


  • We are hiring a postdoc!

    Interested in complex self-assembly of disordered and bio-inspired systems? Want to use and develop state-of-the-art numerical techniques at the intersection of machine learning and statistical physics? Want to discover the physics that will enable next-generation materials? Want to work in an exciting, highly interdisciplinary environment in greater Vienna?

    Come work with us!

  • Catching up

    A lot has happened since September! The first two permanent members of the group, Qing-Long Liu and Maxi Lechner, have arrived as scientific interns. We have also had 3 rotation students: Veronika Szentirmai, Anton Piankov, and Selver Pepic. Welcome all!

  • Hello World!

    Our group officially started at IST Austria on September 1, 2020!

    It took us a while to get this website up and running… presumably because we were so focused on science.