Higgs School on Advances in Computational Active Matter

Image courtesy of the Computational Advances in Active Matter Lorentz workshop and copyright imaginescience.nl

Higgs School on Advances in Computational Active Matter

Active matter has emerged as a field with strong ties to non-equilibrium soft condensed matter and biological physics. Successes of the field include describing the dynamics of motile microbes and flocks of birds, defect self-propulsion in liquid crystals, wound healing and tissue fluidization, modeling of colony growth, and much more. The development of this field owes much to computational techniques. We have therefore put together a school that will introduce early-career researchers to the topic of computational methods for active matter.

Topics Covered

We will provide lectures on 10 topics within computational active matter, each consisting of two 90 minutes sessions, spread over five days. This includes:

• Active-Brownian and Run-and-Tumble Particles
• Cellular-Potts and Vertex Models for Tissues
• Phase-Field Approaches for Pattern-Forming Active Systems
• Hydrodynamic Methods for Active Systems, including Lattice Boltzmann, Multi-Particle Collision Dynamics, and Stokesian Dynamics
• Squirmer models and immersed boundary conditions
• Phoretic Interaction in Chemical Swimmers

The school is concluded with a lecture on the future of active matter systems and will have a group dinner.

Lecturers

We have confirmed the following lecturers and speakers:

• Dr. Benno Liebchen (Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany)
• Dr. Chantal Valeriani (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
• Dr. Davide Marenduzzo (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
• Dr. Enkeleida Lushi (New Jersey Institute of Technology, United States of America)
• Dr. Erika Tsingos (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
• Dr. Gwynn Elfring (University of British Columbia, Canada)
• Dr. Holger Stark (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany)
• Dr. Ignacio Pagonabarraga (University of Barcelona, Spain)
• Dr. Rastko Sknepnek (University of Dundee, United Kingdom)
• Dr. Timm Krüger (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom)

A detailed schedule of the lecturing will be made available soon.

Participation:

If you would like to attend, please register by Sunday March 30^th 2025. There is a £150.00 participation fee, which includes the group dinner, lunches, and refreshments. You will need to arrange your own accommodation. A list of recommended hotels and guest houses has been uploaded to the Indico page. We are limited to 40 participants. Should the school be oversubscribed, we will give preference to PhD students. Registrations should be accompanied by a 100-word motivation and a short CV (max. 1 A4 page) to help us make a selection in that case.

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