Vinothan Manoharan is the Wagner Family Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Physics and the co-Director of the Quantitative Biology Initiative at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on understanding how systems containing many particles suspended in a liquid—such as nanoparticles, proteins, or cells—organize themselves into ordered structures like crystals, viruses, and even living tissues. His lab uses optical microscopy and holography to watch these systems self-assemble in real time. The goal is to discover new, general physical principles that underlie complex systems and to apply these principles to practical problems in materials science, nanotechnology, and medicine. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2004 and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania before arriving at Harvard in 2005. In his spare time, Vinny enjoys volleyball, cooking, and sleeping, though rarely all at the same time.