Motile Matter

Active Matter is composed of particles each supplied with energy which it dissipates, often resulting in systematic movement. Examples include living organisms, their motile constituents and some surprising mechanical and chemical analogues. These strongly driven systems offer a new arena in which to study the interplay of broken symmetry, conservation laws and nonequilibrium statistical physics. The active matter framework is beginning to shed light on processes of biological relevance, and is opening up promising directions in biomimetics. My talk will provide a short survey and then summarise recent work including: imitating chemotaxis; nuclear spin; the actin cortex as an active wetting layer.