简介

Professor Daniel Blair received his PhD in Physics from Clark University after obtaining a SM from the University of Chicago. Prior to his graduate work professor Blair spent over a year as a research student at Argonne National Laboratory in the Material Science Division. After receiving his PhD in 2004, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Department of Physics at Harvard University with David Weitz. Professor Blair received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in 2009. Professor Blair's work can be described as soft condensed matter physics. Soft matter or soft materials physics is a young subfield of condensed matter physics that has it's roots in polymer science. Specifically, his group is working to understand the link between the microstructure of disordered materials and their bulk mechanical properties. To accomplish this, his group is performing experiments in which they deform and measure stress propagation in soft disordered solids such as colloidal glasses, gels, and foams. The glasses we construct are surprisingly similar to their atomic counterparts, but have length and size scales that allow for direct real time information to be acquired using advanced microscopy techniques