The arrangements of particles and forces in granular materials have a complex organization
on multiple spatial scales that range from local structures to mesoscale and system-wide …

Earth's surface is composed of a staggering diversity of particulate–fluid mixtures: dry to wet,
dilute to dense, colloidal to granular and attractive to repulsive particles. This material variety …

In materials science, high performance is typically associated with regularity and order,
while disorder and the presence of defects are assumed to lead to sub-optimal outcomes …

We present measurements of the stress response of packings formed from a wide range of
particle shapes. Besides spheres these include convex shapes such as the Platonic solids …

Recently, the study of long, slender living worms has gained attention due to their unique
ability to form highly entangled physical structures, exhibiting emergent behaviors. These …

The dynamic patterns and coordinated motion displayed by groups of social animals are a
beautiful example of self-organization in natural far-from-equilibrium systems. Recent …

Robot locomotion is typically generated by coordinated integration of single-purpose
components, like actuators, sensors, body segments, and limbs. We posit that certain future …

The flowing, jamming, and avalanche behavior of granular materials is satisfyingly universal
and vexingly hard to tune: A granular flow is typically intermittent and will irremediably jam if …

Systems of randomly packed, macroscopic elements, from jammed spherical grains to
tangled long filaments, represent a broad class of disordered meta-materials with a wide …

We study how the three-dimensional shape of rigid filaments determines the microscopic
dynamics and macroscopic rheology of entangled semidilute Brownian suspensions. To …