Title: The physics of glass formation: from liquids to living cells

Speaker: Prof. Liesbeth Janssen (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Abstract:

The liquid-to-glass transition remains one of the deepest unsolved problems in condensed matter science, and is now finding renewed interest in the context of dense active and living matter. In this talk, I will present a recently developed first-principles theory of glass formation, referred to as Generalized Mode-Coupling Theory, that can shed new light on glassy phenomena. I will demonstrate that the theory can be successfully applied not only to ordinary glass-forming materials, but also to more complex systems such as dense collectives of living cells. Ultimately, this work can help to elucidate the fundamental link between structure and dynamics in dense disordered matter, and may even find applications in medical diagnostics to distinguish healthy from pathological cell tissue.

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