The materials from which life is built are typically soft, adaptable and active. In order to study them, we need model materials with similar properties. Based on new insights into a complex material class called elasto-viscoplastics, which includes toothpaste, I propose to develop a new class of active elasto-viscoplastics (A-EVP). These materials could mimic natural life processes like cell migration and embryo development. I will integrate advanced experiments and simulations to develop a mechanical framework, enhancing our understanding of biological mechanics and advancing the creation of innovative, bio-inspired materials like smart 3D-printed and autonomous active matter.

We have built a setup to trap ions and to deliver optical tweezers onto them. The tweezers can be used to program the interactions between the ions in such a way, that they can be used as a quantum computer. We have managed to deliver the tweezers onto the ions and are now obtaining our first results. During the project, we figured out that there may be another way of using tweezers, that is both easier and smarter. We have now started building a completely new setup to implement this idea and have filed for a patent.

Bringing together the fields of hydrodynamics of complex fluids and microgravity physics, this project targeted the foundations needed to design and test soft matter printers for low and zero gravity conditions. To this end, we constructed an experimental setup. We then used ZARM’s drop tower facility in Bremen for microgravity conditions. We systematically studied the spreading of complex fluids on surfaces with and without gravity. Such results are essential to construct optimal fluid-based systems such as 3D printing in space. Our experiments also provide unique results where multiple theoretical and computational studies can be tested.

With a growing global population, food consumption will exceed from that of today. We need to adapt to more sustainable sources and production methods, like using milder processing routes or replacing animal proteins by plant proteins. This implies the use of more complex mixtures as ingredient. We will investigate to what extent these more sustainable ingredient sources and processes can be used to manufacture products with desirable structural and mechanical properties. The strategy is twofold. One is to start with mildly purified plant extracts, investigate bulk and interfacial properties for specific product types and explore the effects of further purification of the ingredients. The other is to start with mixtures of well purified ingredients form the same plant source, investigate the same bulk and interfacial properties and explore the effects of mixing of the ingredients towards more complex composition. For both strategies, plant based protein mixtures are also mixed with dairy proteins to get insights in the effect of replacement of animal by plant protein on food product structural and mechanical properties. In particular we aim a) to understand the conditions to produce products with desirable structural and mechanical properties from more sustainable ingredient sources, b) to quantify sustainability effects of source and processing methods for a set of sources and processes and c) to formulate main lever rules that relate the properties of sustainable produced complex ingredient mixtures for a given source to desired product properties like structure and mechanical properties on all relevant length scales.