What Emerges When Soft Matter Is Pushed Away From Equilibrium?
Speaker
Joe Patterson
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Irvine
About This Talk
Energy-driven active soft matter systems—assemblies that consume chemical or electrical energy to maintain nonequilibrium structure and function—are emerging as powerful platforms for responsive, adaptive materials. In this talk, UC Irvine’s Joe Patterson will discuss the dissipative self-assembly of peptide-based supramolecular systems under chemical and electrochemical fueling conditions, showing how energy input governs both structure formation and dynamic evolution across multiple length and time scales.
To probe these systems, he employs a multimodal electron microscopy strategy that combines liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy (Liquid EM) with cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Cryo-EM enables high-resolution imaging of transient assemblies frozen in their native out-of-equilibrium states, while Liquid EM provides real-time observation of morphological evolution in solution. Together, these techniques offer unprecedented insight into the stochastic, heterogeneous pathways of active self-assembly and filament formation.
Patterson will show that driving the system away from equilibrium induces the formation of metastable morphologies with distinct dynamics. These findings have broad implications for designing synthetic materials that mimic biological adaptability and suggest a new paradigm in which structure and dynamics can be rationally tuned through energy landscape engineering. This work also illustrates the power of integrating advanced electron microscopy with controlled energy inputs to study nonequilibrium materials at molecular resolution.
About the Speaker
Joe Patterson is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. He earned his undergraduate and PhD in chemistry at the University of York and Warwick, respectively, and did postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego and the Eindhoven University of Technology.
His research focuses on the development of electron microscopy methods to provide a better understanding of molecular self-assembly. For this work, Patterson has received the Jon Weave PhD Prize, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the Microscopy Society of American, Burton Medal.
About the MSE Seminar Series
The Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Seminar Series features distinguished speakers from leading institutions, offering a platform for sharing groundbreaking research, innovative ideas, and entrepreneurial experiences. Held multiple times each semester, these seminars bring global perspectives world to MIT’s materials research community, exposing students, faculty, and postdocs to cutting-edge concepts and valuable networking opportunities.