We are a group of biophysicists, physicists, chemists and microbiologists at UCL. We study artificial and biological soft active matter. We are interested in its fundamental behaviours and its applications to healthcare and materials science. We are always looking for bright people to join us at any level. Get in touch!
We use a combination of techniques from soft matter, microscopy, photonics, statistical physics and nanofabrication. We are part of the UCL Soft Materials and Antimicrobial Resistance Networks. Recent research highlights are detailed below.
We are inviting applications for a Research Fellow in Experimental Active Matter to join us. Deadline for application: 8 April 2026 The position is available…
Continue reading → We are hiring a Research Fellow in Experimental Active Matter!
Droplet scientists push the boundary between living and non-living matter Joe, Rob and I discuss the past, present and future of animating droplets in this…
Continue reading → Physicsworld podcast on our recent EPL perspective
Towards animate droplets: Active, adaptive, and autonomous Joe Forth, Robert Malinowski & Giorgio Volpe Droplets, sub-millilitre liquid volumes with at least one interface, have traditionally…
Continue reading → Our perspective on “Animate Droplets” out in EPL
Anomalous Dynamics of Superparamagnetic Colloidal Microrobots with Tailored Statistics Alessia Gentili, Rainer Klages & Giorgio Volpe Living organisms have developed advanced motion strategies for efficient…
Maks Pecnik Bambic PhD Student (2021-2025) Maks completed his PhD in Computational Soft Matter. During his PhD, Maks studied the effect of environmentally induced torques…
Continue reading → Congratulations to Maks for successfully passing his PhD viva
Ann-Céline’s project focuses on developing synthetic biology tools to fight AMR. This project is co-supervised with Dr Mike Booth at UCL Chemistry and is part…
Continue reading → Welcome to Ann-Céline, a new PhD student in the group
Sandrine Heijnen PhD Student (2020-2025) Sandrine completed her PhD in Physical Chemistry. During her PhD, Sandrine studied the self-organisation of thermally driven active particles.
Aligne−d is a tile-based puzzle game in which players must join two electrodes on a hexagonal grid using a selection of organic molecules. Players are scored…
U-Net 3+ for anomalous diffusion analysis enhanced with mixture estimates (U-AnD-ME) in particle-tracking data Solomon Asghar, Ran Ni & Giorgio Volpe Biophysical processes within living…
Continue reading → Our method (U-AnD-ME) to characterise single-particle trajectories is out
Soft Active Matter Lab 