Material of the future

MPIDS Researcher receives two -year Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation

Fanlong Meng, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS) in Göttingen, receives a two-year scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Fanlong Meng is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics of Living Matter (LMP) led by Director Ramin Golestanian at MPIDS.

Fanlong Meng works on the theoretical modelling of soft and active matter systems. These studies help understand equilibrium and non-equilibrium responses of various complex systems including living systems, and can also provide guidelines for soft-matter related industrial applications, for example, fabrication of self-healing polymer materials, and designs of synthetic microswimmers and their behavior controls. With the Humboldt Fellowship, Dr. Meng will focus on the theoretical study of active matter systems, especially magnetic active driven matter, including collective responses of magnetic colloids, emergent dynamics of magnetic microswimmers, mechanical properties of magnetic gels, etc. These studies will not only advance the physical understanding of active/driven matter systems, but also provide hints for their future designs and applications.

Scientific career

Fanlong Meng got his bachelor degree in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2010. After this, he pursued his joint Msc-PhD study in Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Zhongcan Ouyang and Prof. Masao Doi, during which he worked on polymer translocation, drying dynamics of soft matter solutions and elastic instability of rubbery systems. After obtaining the PhD degree in 2015, Dr. Meng started his first postdoctoral position in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, working with Prof. Eugene Terentjev on the rheology of the transient polymer networks and the elastic theory of the bio-filament networks. In 2016, Fanlong Meng joined the University of Oxford for his second postdoc position, working with Prof. Ramin Golestanian and Prof. Julia Yeomans on magnetic active matter. In 2018, Dr. Meng started working at the MPIDS in the LMP department headed by Prof. Golestanian and is studying active matter, such as metachronal waves of cilia arrays.