Sector of Biological and Soft Systems (BSS)
The 21st Century promises a major expansion at the interface of physics with the biological sciences and nanotechnology. These are areas which fall outside the conventional boundaries of the scientific disciplines of Chemistry, Physics and Biology, requiring a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach. The Biological and Soft Systems Sector of the Cavendish Laboratory (BSS), formed in 2004, is pursuing such multidisciplinary research. Using techniques and inspirations from classical polymer physics, soft matter physics and the physics of condensed matter, we build on this foundation with exciting progress in protein folding, biomaterials, cell biophysics and nanoscience, using theoretical, computational, and experimental methods. The BSS Sector is ideally placed, with the right expertise, to be a major player in these exciting new areas of science.
BSS is also a significant part of the Physics of Medicine initiative, and much of our research activity now takes place within the new Centre for the Physics of Medicine.
Our Key Strengths are:
Recent Publications
- Improved Electrochromic Performance in Inverse Opal Vanadium Oxide Films, L. Li U. Steiner, S. Mahajan, J. Mater. Chem. DOI:10.1039/C0JM00558D
- Frequency factors in a landscape model of filamentous protein aggregation, A.K. Buell, J.R. Blundell, C.M. Dobson, M.E. Welland, E.M. Terentjev, T.P.J. Knowles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 228101
- Relaxation kinetics of stretched disclination lines in a nematic liquid crystal, N. Osterman, J. Kotar, E.M. Terentjev, P. Cicuta, Phys. Rev. E 81 061701
- Mechanosensitivity of astrocytes on optimized polyacrylamide gels analyzed by quantitative morphometry, P. Moshayedi, L. da F Costa, A. Christ, S. P. Lacour, J. Fawcett, J. Guck, and K. Franze, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 22 194114
- Detecting DNA Folding with Nanocapillaries, Lorenz J. Steinbock, Oliver Otto, Catalin Chimerel, Joanne Gornall and Ulrich F. Keyser, Nano Letters DOI: 10.1021/nl100997s
- All sector publications...
- Related institutions and initiatives
- Cavendish Laboratory
- Cambridge Nanoscience Centre
- Physics of Living Matter
- Physics of Medicine
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