Pasquali elected American Physical Society fellow

Matteo Pasquali, chair of Rice’s Department of Chemistry and the A. J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering, has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Matteo Pasquali

He is one of 255 new fellows elected by the society and was honored for “fundamental contributions to the understanding of carbon nanotube and graphene soft phases, and for the development of routes for making novel carbon nanotube soft conductors for interfacing with biological systems.”

A member of the Rice faculty since 1999, Pasquali directs the Complex Flows of Complex Fluids lab at Rice, which investigates the interaction of flow and liquid micro- and nanostructures in complex fluids. Among the lab’s achievements is the development of fibers made of pure carbon nanotubes through a scalable wet spinning method that has spun off the startup company DexMat. These fibers are being tested for use as brain implants and in heart surgeries, among other applications.

The lab also studies how individual nanotubes move in liquids and the collective behavior of nanotubes in solutions, including the morphology of liquid crystalline phases. These liquid phases are used to form conductive, transparent films as well as data cables and three-dimensional structures.

The American Physical Society is a nonprofit organization to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through research journals, scientific meetings and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities. APS represents over 53,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world.