Doctoral candidate Kristian Stølevik Olsen at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, is defending the thesis
“Active and passive Brownian particles in complex environments”
for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor.
Time and place: Jan. 29, 2021 1:00 PM, Zoom
The PhD defence and trial lecture are fully digital and streamed using Zoom. The chair of the defence will moderate the disputation.
Ex auditorio questions: the chair of the defence will invite the audience to ask ex auditorio questions either written or oral. This can be requested by clicking ‘Participants’ and then choose ‘Raise hand’.
Trial lecture
“Droplets in Nature”
Recording of the trial lecture will be available until January 29.
Candidate contact information: k.s.olsen@fys.uio.no
Adjudication Committee
Professor Julia Yeomans, The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, UK
Professor Paul Dommersnes, Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Professor Dag Dysthe, Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway
Supervisors
Professor Eirik Grude Flekkøy, Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway
Professor Knut Jørgen Måløy, Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway
Chair of defence
Head of Department Susanne F. Viefers, Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway
Main research findings
In his annus mirabilis Albert Einstein published several important works that would strongly affect the future of physics. Among these was a work on Brownian motion – the random motion of small particles suspended in a liquid due to thermal fluctuations, as discovered by Robert Brown almost a century earlier. Today, stochastic modeling akin to that of Brownian motion is one of the main tools used to understand the complex motion of particles in disordered or otherwise non-trivial media on small scales. Applications range from the almost trivial, like a drop of colored dye slowly spreading in a stationary fluid, to the more complex, like cells migrating through the extra-cellular matrix or bacteria moving in a disordered media.
In this thesis the stochastic dynamics of both passive (like the dye) and active particles (like the bacterium) is studied in different complex environments. The interplay between a complex medium or a geometric confinement and the dynamics of active particles has become a field of great interest in recent year, with hopes of constructing biology-inspired machines and micro-robotics performing tasks like drug delivery.
Contact information to Department: Line Trosterud Resvold