This $450,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to Purdue University will support research to characterize the motion and orientation of non-spherical particles in viscoelastic fluids. The research will involve microfluidic experiments, simulations, and theoretical modeling to quantify the interplay between lift forces and particle orientation for different flow rates, particle geometries, fluid properties, and channel confinement....
The National Science Foundation Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems awarded Purdue University a $222,917 Project Grant under the Engineering federal grant program (CFDA 47.041) to support research titled "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: DYNAMICS AND STABILITY OF MULTI-COMPONENT LIPID VESICLES IN FLOW" from January 15, 2022 through December 31, 2024. The grant funding will support Purdue University's research exploring the dynamics and stability of...
This National Science Foundation project grant of $500,000 will fund research at the University of California, Santa Barbara to study the assembly, disassembly, and mechanics of porous colloidal vesicles from April 15, 2023 to March 31, 2026. The research aims to advance understanding of fundamental processes involved in vesicle formation that are relevant across fields including physics, biology, engineering, and materials science. The university researchers will utilize state-of-the-art...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) Project Grant award of $120,000 to the University of Maryland, College Park provides funding to characterize and model the role of interfaces in suspension dynamics. The goal is to develop a new understanding of capillary dynamics when solid non-Brownian particles are dispersed in a Newtonian liquid phase. The research will use state-of-the-art experimental studies coupled with numerical simulations to advance the...
This $220,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to advance the understanding of how soft, deformable particles, such as oil droplets and cells, move through complex environments consisting of narrow constrictions and obstacles. The award to Emory University will systematically investigate the flow of bubbles and droplets through obstacle arrays, studying the effects of particle surface tension, obstacle density, size, and...
This three-year $244,000 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems will fund research into the stability and dispersion of viscoelastic flows through porous media. The awardee, Purdue University, will integrate microfluidic experiments and numerical simulations to determine the role of geometrical structure, disorder, and porosity on viscoelastic instability in two-dimensional porous media flows. They will also...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $200,000 in funding to The Trustees of the Stevens Institute of Technology to investigate the behavior of molecules confined in small pores of polymeric nanoparticles. The project aims to synthesize porous polymeric nanospheres containing sacrificial gold nanoparticles, which will then be removed to create pores with controlled geometry and distribution. The research will explore how...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will fund research at Villanova University to investigate the interaction between particles and soft substrates. The $523,654 award, with a performance period from September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2028, aims to develop a new method for predicting and designing particle assembly on soft materials. The research will explore collision-based self-limiting particle assembly mechanisms, integrating...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) project grant under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) will develop and characterize enzyme-loaded protein vesicles that can partition hydrophobic substrates and products to improve the sustainability of industrial biocatalysis. The $503,611 award to the Georgia Tech Research Corporation will (1) create pH-responsive vesicles containing a dehalogenase enzyme, (2) assess partitioning of substrates with varying hydrophobicity into...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems award of $234,000 to the University of Illinois will support collaborative research on developing an active lipid vesicle-based drug delivery system. The project aims to accomplish three key objectives: 1) examine the directed motion of lipid vesicles driven by encapsulated self-propelled particles, 2) develop a non-contact photoreaction mechanism to induce rupture and controlled...