The SMRLab

Friction of the Third Body

Particles trapped between two rough surfaces generate friction between them.
Visualizing an Interface using TIR

Totally Internally Reflected (TIR) light within a glass plate highlights the contact points of a rough rubber sample.
Vortex Ring Collisions

Colliding underwater vortices produce exquisite ordered patterns and turbulence.
Biofilm Collective Dynamics: Plumes

A laser sheet reveals the collective behavior of bacterial cells underneath a liquid-air biofilm.
Biofilm Structure

A close-up of a fluorescently-tagged bacterial biofilm shows red motile cells swimming along highways of green matrix cells.

Our interests are in experimental, out of equilibrium, and non-linear physics:

hydrodynamics, soft matter physics, mechanics, statistical physics, and when all else fails...biology.