Welcome

... to the Furst Research Group Wiki at the University of Delaware

The wiki is a resource for sharing information in the research group and with the rest of the world. (Hello, world!) All group members are welcome to contribute.

Large Language Model Tech Talk: LLM2025

Research in the Furst Group

Research in the Furst Group focuses on the physics and chemistry of colloidal, polymeric, biomolecular, and other soft materials with an emphasis on their rheology and interfacial phenomena. The engineering applications of our work include particle technology, the design and characterization of structured and complex fluids, creating new nanomaterials through self-assembly, and understanding and controlling physical processes in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, like protein aggregation at interfaces. Many of the problems we work on stem from close partnerships with industry and national laboratories.

Another hallmark of Furst Group research is our interest in developing new experiments. From laser tweezer measurements of colloidal micromechanics and high pressure microrheology to dielectric spectroscopy and microfluidics, we design, build, validate, and use unique experiments to probe, push, and break soft materials at nanometer and micrometer lengthscales. The recent book from the group on the principles and practice of microrheology (Eric M. Furst and Todd M. Squires, Microrheology, Oxford University Press: New York, 2017) is a culmination of many of these investigations. It's currently available at OUP and Amazon. A new, even more affordable paperback edition came out in 2021. (With corrections!)

You can find out about our current research topics and publications, including our contributions to the science of biopharmaceuticals, microrheology, directed self-assembly, colloidal gelation, and more.

Or you can read online articles about our microgravity research on the International Space Station, where we've led experiments to study colloid self-assembly.

The group hosts a Microrheology Resources, including a Particle Tracking Microrheology Tutorial, Matlab routines, and sample data sets.

Current members of the research group

Prof. Eric M. Furst, Principal Investigator -- Faculty page, Google Scholar, CV
Jason Conradt, PhD 2026 (BS, Oregon State University)
Kenneth Crane-Moscowitz, PhD candidate (BS, Georgia Tech)
Bree Huntington, PhD candidate (BS, Penn State)
Matthew Pitell, PhD candidate (BS, Case Western)
Michelle Sandag, PhD candidate (BS, Johns Hopkins)
Harrison Davis, PhD candidate (BS, Rensselaer, Merck Fellow)
Dylan Stare, Undergraduate researcher
Frank Barone, Undergraduate researcher

Here is a list of Furst Group alumni, 2001-2025

A few of our collaborators

Jan Vermant, Department of Materials, ETH Zürich
Anaël Lemaître, Xavier Chateau, and Julie Goyon, Laboratoire Navier, Rheophysics and porous media group, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech and Université Gustave Eiffel
Patrick Spicer, University of New South Wales, Australia
George Fytas, Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung, Mainz, Germany
Michael Solomon, Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan
Todd Squires, Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara
Olivia du Roure, Julien Heuvingh, Anke Lindner, and Marc Fermigier, PMMH, ESPCI, Paris
Jim Swan, Department of Chemical Engineering, MIT -- About Jim Swan (1982-2021)

At Delaware, we collaborate with the Lenhoff, Roberts, Wagner and April Kloxin groups in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Chris Kloxin and Pochan labs in Materials Science and Engineering.