Welcome!

Welcome to this week-long workshop on Frustrated Assemblies taking place on the University of Michigan campus in beautiful downtown Ann Arbor.

About

Geometric frustration has been identified as an effective pathway towards complex assemblies, along with other mechanisms such as chirality, out-of-equilibrium fluctuations, chaos, and self-organized criticality. Geometric frustration arises when local ordering principles compete and are sometimes incompatible with global constraints, leading to assemblies that deviate from simple crystalline symmetry. This phenomenon spans multiple length scales, from molecular to nano and micro systems. Understanding its origins and manifestations requires a multidisciplinary approach, combining insights from non-Euclidean geometry, elasticity, gauge theories, and graph theory. These theoretical frameworks are crucial for elucidating the fundamental principles underlying frustrated assemblies and predicting their behavior under various conditions. 

The workshop will address the experimental challenges and opportunities in characterizing these systems. Techniques to resolve the intricate structures and dynamic behavior of frustrated assemblies are advancing rapidly, enabling unprecedented insights. Similarly, computational simulations are playing an increasingly vital role, offering predictive tools to explore parameter spaces and design new assemblies that are otherwise difficult to realize experimentally. 

The results from studying frustrated assemblies are not merely academic; they promise practical applications across a wide range of fields. Functional materials derived from these assemblies could exhibit unique optical, mechanical, or electronic properties. In the biomedical domain, frustrated assemblies might inspire innovations in drug delivery systems, tissue engineering scaffolds, and understanding biological structures such as viral capsids and cellular membranes, where frustration plays a key role. 

Biology, in particular, offers a rich source of inspiration. Nature exploits frustration to generate complexity and functionality in systems ranging from protein complexes to cytoskeletal structures. By emulating these principles, researchers can design bioinspired materials with hierarchical architectures and tunable functionalities. 

This workshop will bring together experts from diverse disciplines, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, materials science and engineering, to foster dialogue and collaboration, aiming to advance our understanding of frustrated assemblies and their potential. It will cover a broad range of topics, including: 

● Origin of geometric frustration in assemblies at the molecular, nano and micro scales 

● Fundamental theories of geometrically frustrated assembly: non-Euclidean geometry, elasticity, gauge theories, and graphs 

● Experimental methods in characterizing structures and dynamics of frustrated assemblies 

● Computational methods in simulating frustrated assemblies 

● Diverse functionalities from complex frustrated assemblies 

● Frustrated assemblies and their functionality in biology 

By addressing these areas, the workshop will provide a comprehensive platform for advancing the field and exploring the untapped potential of frustrated assemblies. The insights gained will inform the design of next-generation materials and technologies, bridging fundamental science with transformative applications.