Aluru received the B.E. degree with honors and distinction from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India, the M.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University, Stanford, CA. He was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, from 1995 to 1997. He joined the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin in August 2021. Prior to joining UT Austin, he was on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) from 1998 to 2021.

Abstract | In nanoscale fluid mechanics, the size of the fluid molecule is comparable to the size of the channel or pore through which the fluid is transported. At these length scales, many interesting issues arise, and classical understanding needs to be revisited. This talk focuses on highlighting some of the fundamental aspects that need to be considered at the molecular scale. First, we will discuss transport through nanotubes and understand the importance of the electronic structure of the nanotube on transport through it. Second, we will consider transport through ultrathin membranes containing catalytic sites. In addition to understanding complex reactive transport mechanisms, we will show that these mechanisms can be exploited for separating ionic complexes. Third, we will discuss quantum coupling between an interfacial fluid and solid and show that the fluid properties can be tuned by tuning the electronic structure of the solid. Finally, we will discuss memory effects in electrolyte transport through nanoporous materials. Computational challenges stemming from the complex molecular transport to ionic memory will be addressed.

Adela Ben-Yakar is Harry Kent Endowed Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Engineering and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford and Harvard Universities in Physics. Dr. Ben-Yakar is the Fellow of the SPIE, OSA, and AIMBE. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, Zonta Amelia Earhart Award, NSF Career Award, Human Frontier Science Program Research Award, NIH Director’s Transformative Award, and Faculty Investment Initiative Program Fellowship. Her research focus is in the areas of ultrafast laser microsurgery, nonlinear imaging endoscopy, high-speed nonlinear microscopy for brain imaging, high-throughput optical and microfluidic systems for high-content screening of model organisms and organoids with application in the areas of nerve regeneration, spine surgery, cancer diagnostics, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Abstract | Next-generation chemical testing for efficacy and toxicology stands to benefit significantly from New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), including platforms that utilize small model organisms such as C. elegans or three-dimensional (3D) tissue culture models like organoids. These innovative platforms are essential for meeting the recent FDA guidelines, which call for a strategic roadmap to reduce reliance on animal testing in preclinical safety studies.

In this talk, I will present our efforts in developing two high-content imaging platforms designed to advance NAMs-based testing: OrganoidChip and vivoChip. OrganoidChip offers a unique, integrated system for both culturing and high-resolution imaging of organoids, streamlining the experimental workflow. vivoChip, a robust and scalable platform, enables the use of diverse C. elegans models to perform high-content safety studies with the speed and cost-efficiency of in vitro assays, while capturing whole-organism responses and eliminating ethical concerns associated with traditional animal testing.

Dr. Pei-Yu Chiou received his Ph.D. degree in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department from the University of California at Berkeley in 2005. He received his M.S. degree in the Electrical Engineering Department from UCLA and B.S. degree in the Mechanical Engineering Department from National Taiwan University in 1998. He was an assistant professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) between 2006~2011, associate professor between 2011~2015, and full professor since then. He is also a joint professor in the Bioengineering Department in UCLA. His research interests focus on optofluidics, optoacoustics, laser manufacturing, and rapid prototyping of functional devices and structures. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2008, UCLA MAE Teaching Award in 2014. He was elected to American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) fellow in 2016, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) fellow in 2017, IEEE Fellow in 2018, and NAI Fellow in 2024.

Abstract | Manipulating single cells with light beams has attracted significant interest over the past two decades, driven by the reconfigurability, simplicity, and scalability of light. This talk provides an overview of various mechanisms that allows manipulation of single cells with light beams, including optical tweezers, optoelectronic tweezers (OET), and acoustic tweezers.

Conventional optical tweezers leverage optical momentum for precise 3D control and are widely used in biophysical studies, but their high-power requirements limit large-area, massively parallel operations. To overcome this, OET uses light as an electrical switch to control local dielectrophoretic forces, enabling the simultaneous manipulation of thousands of single cells. However, OET faces challenges when operating in physiological buffers due to device costs and heat management needs.

In our recent work, we introduce a new mechanism that uses a light beam to control acoustic forces for single-cell trapping and release. This approach is purely mechanical, biocompatible, and allowing massively parallel manipulation over large areas and addressing key limitations of existing optical methods.

Dr. D. Emma Fan is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, with affiliated appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Materials Science and Engineering Program, and the Texas Materials Institute. Prof. Fan leads a cutting-edge research program focused on the fabrication, manipulation, and assembly of intelligent micro/nanoscale structures, 3D hierarchical porous materials, and stimulus-responsive systems. She is a recipient of two prestigious NSF honors: the NSF CAREER Award (2012) and the NSF Mid-Career Advancement Award (2022). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2021) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) (2024), where she was elected to the Board of Directors (2025) by a vote of over 2,000 Fellows. In 2025, she was named a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors, and has served as an Official Nominator for the Japan Prize since 2017. In recognition of her contributions to engineering and mentorship, she was selected as the 2022 Ilene Busch-Vishniac Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University—an honor that celebrates outstanding women in engineering and aims to inspire the next generation.

Abstract | Electric fields applied to particulate-dispersed aqueous solutions unveil a fascinating spectrum of interactions, categorized into electron transfer-driven chemical reactions and non-electron transfer-induced physical motions. These interactions pave the way for pioneering advancements in robotic materials and devices. In this talk, I will present our recent research on harnessing these effects to engineer robotic systems across a scale spanning from nanometers to decimeters. From nanoscale high-precision bioprobes capable of ultraprecision cell-signal sensing, to chip-scale microbubble actuators for assembling cell-nanosensor arrays for drug screening, and decimeter-scale disinfection devices realizing practical bulk-water treatment, our innovations highlight the transformative potential of electric-matter-water interactions for applications in biological, medicine, and environmental technologies.

Benny Freeman is the William J. (Bill) Murray, Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and is Professorial Fellow at Monash University. He is a professor of Chemical Engineering and has been a faculty member for 35 years. Dr. Freeman’s research is in polymer science and engineering and, more specifically, in mass transport of small molecules in solid polymers. He currently directs 15 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows performing fundamental research in gas and liquid separations using polymer and polymer-based membranes. His research group focuses on discovery of structure/property relations for desalination and gas separation membrane materials, new materials for hydrogen separation, natural gas purification, carbon capture, and new materials for improving fouling resistance, permeation, and separation performance in liquid separation membranes. He is Director of the Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems (M-WET), a Department of Energy EFRC (Energy Frontier Research Center).

His research is described in more than 500 publications and 24 US and international patents. He has co-edited 5 books on these topics. His research has served as the basis for several startup companies, including EnergyX and NALA Systems. He has won numerous awards, including the AIChE Materials Engineering & Sciences Division Braskem Award for Excellence in Materials Science and Engineering, the ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Institute Award for Excellence in Industrial Gases Technology. He is a Fellow of the AIChE, ACS, North American Membrane Society, AAAS, PMSE, POLY, and IECR divisions of ACS. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science & Technology.

Abstract | Olefin/paraffin separations are the most energy-intensive separations in the petrochemical industry, and attempts to decarbonize this process by moving away from cryogenic distillation have met with limited success. Historically, silver salt-based facilitated transport membranes for olefin/paraffin separation have been studied but not reduced to practice, due in large part to the chemical instability of the silver salts to contaminants that can be in such process streams, such as hydrogen and acetylene. We have recently discovered that certain silver salts, when added to rubbery polymers, have outstanding separation performance and are highly stable to the presence of compounds like hydrogen and acetylene. This presentation will focus on the scientific basis for this stability and discuss initial steps to reduce these membranes to practice.

Prof. Venkat Ganesan presently holds the Les and Sherri Stuewer Endowed Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his BTech from IIT Madras in 1995 and PhD from MIT in 1999. After a postdoc for 2 years in UCSB, he joined the department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin in 2001, where he has been since. In recognition of his research accomplishments, he have been honored by many awards and honors, including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2004), the National Science Foundation's CAREER award (2004), American Physical Society's John H. Dillon Medal (2009), as a Kavli Fellow (2009), and elected as a fellow of American Physical Society (2013) and American Association for the Advancement of Science (2018) and distinguished alumni award from IIT Madras in 2022.

Abstract | Recent experiments have revealed that random zwitterionic amphiphilic copolymer (r-ZAC) membranes exhibit excellent anion permselectivity characteristics which circumvent the solubility-diffusivity trade-off. Motivated by such results, we conducted molecular dynamics simulations at both membrane and pore scales to investigate the origin of the experimental results on the transport of salt in r-ZAC membranes. In this talk, I will discuss the outcomes of our studies in this regard, in which we probed the roles of nanoconfinement, zwitterion architecture and chemistry, and the influence of dipole orientation of the zwitterion on the sorption and transport of salts.

Manish Kumar is a Professor of Environmental Engineering and Chemical Engineering at UT Austin. He received his bachelors from the National Institute of Technology in Trichy, India in Chemical Engineering. He completed a masters in environmental engineering at the University of Illinois and then worked for approximately seven years in the environmental consulting industry on applied research projects primarily centered around membranes for water treatment, desalination, and reclamation. He returned to Illinois to complete a PhD in the area of biomimetic membranes and then conducted postdoctoral research at the Harvard Medical School on the structure of water channel proteins, aquaporins. He works in the areas of biophysical transport characterization, membrane protein-based membranes and devices and on developing artificial membrane proteins (based on synthetic supramolecular macrocycles) for applications in energy and resource recovery. His group also works on challenges with operation of large-scale membrane desalination and water reuse facilities as well as microscopic analyses of commercial membranes.

Abstract | Membranes are rapidly becoming the fastest growing platform for water purification, wastewater reuse, and desalination. They are also emerging in importance for carbon capture, hydrocarbon separations, and are being considered for applications involving catalysis and sensing. All synthetic membranes have selectivity-permeablility tradeoffs, i.e. if a membrane has high permeability, it will have a lower selectivity between two solutes or between a dissolved solute and a solvent. This is due to the mechanism of solution-diffusion through a wide distribution of free volume elements in non-porous membranes such as reverse osmosis membranes used for desalination and reuse, and a wide pore size distribution in porous membranes. A simple solution, in concept, to such a challenge is to do what nature does – design precise angstrom to micron scale pores with no polydispersity. However, so far, such an ideal has not been realized in synthetic membranes and in particular for angstrom scale separations. We will discuss bioinspired ideas, and its realization in our lab, that could lead to an achievement of such an ideal membrane based on biological protein channels and artificial channels that mimic their structure.

Hang Lu is the C. J. “Pete” Silas Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Associate Dean for Research and Innovation of College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2003 from MIT. Between 2003 and 2005, she was a postdoc at UCSF and the Rockefeller University in neuroscience. She has been an assistant professor (2005-2010), associate professor (2010-2013), and professor (2013-present) of chemical & biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech. Her current research interests are in microfluidics, automation, quantitative imaging, data science, and their applications in neurobiology, cell biology, cancer, and biotechnology. Her award and honors include the Pioneer of Miniaturization Lectureship, the ACS Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a DuPont Young Professor Award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, Council of Systems Biology in Boston (CSB2) Prize in Systems Biology, Georgia Tech Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, and Georgia Tech Outstanding PhD Thesis Advisor Award; she was also named an MIT Technology Review TR35 top innovator, and invited to give the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Van Ness Award Lectures in 2011, and the Saville Lecture at Princeton in 2013. She is an elected fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), of Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She is currently the associate director of the Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (SCMB) at Georgia Tech, supported by NSF and Simons Foundation. Her lab’s work has been/is supported by >$37M ($17M to her lab) from US NSF, NIH, private foundations and others.

Abstract | My lab is interested in engineering machine learning tools and microtechnologies to address questions in systems neuroscience, developmental biology, and cell biology that are difficult to answer with conventional techniques. Microfluidics provide the appropriate length scale for investigating molecules, cells, and small organisms; moreover, one can also take advantage of unique phenomena associated with small-scale flow and field effects, as well as unprecedented parallelization and automation to gather quantitative and large-scale data about complex biological systems. In parallel, ML technologies have now vastly expanded the capabilities for scientific inquiry, both in data processing and data interpretation.

We are particularly interested in the questions of how the brain is assembled during development (and changes during aging) and information is processed by brain circuits. We work with a powerful genetic system - the free-living soil nematode C. elegans. In this talk, I will introduce powerful machine-learning/statistical and physics-based tools to accelerate the understanding of C. elegans brain in the context of neural development and aging, sensorimotor integration, higher cognitive functions such as learning. The technological approaches greatly reduce bias, enable automated and robust cell/synapse identification, and will enable a variety of applications including gene-expression analysis, whole-brain imaging, and connectomics.

Hang Ren is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He received B.S. in Chemistry from Sun Yat-Sen University (2011) and Ph.D. Analytical Chemistry from the University of Michigan (2016) under Prof. Mark Meyerhoff, followed by a postdoc with Prof. Henry White at the University of Utah. Currently, his lab develops electroanalytical methods to elucidate interface heterogeneity and dynamics in electrocatalysis, energy storage, and biology.

Dr. Ren has received several awards, including NSF CAREER, DARPA Young Faculty Award, DARPA Director's Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, SEAC Young Investigator Award, NIH MIRA, Scialog Fellowship, ACS Rising Star in Measurement Science, and Nanoscale Emerging Investigator.

Abstract | Understanding the structure-reactivity relationship at electrochemical interfaces is central to unraveling nearly all electrochemical processes. However, these interfaces are typically structurally heterogeneous, which impedes interpreting the structure-activity relationships using conventional ensemble electrochemical measurements. In this presentation, I will discuss our efforts toward developing and applying electroanalytical techniques—such as scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) and correlative microscopy—to gain new knowledge from electrochemical interfacial heterogeneity. First, I will discuss our efforts towards probing local product selectivity in electrocatalytic reactions by integrating SECCM with scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM). When combined with correlative electron microscopy, this approach enables simultaneous mapping of the facet-dependent activity and selectivity in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on polycrystalline Au and Pt. Finally, I will discuss our method of measuring site-specific nucleation kinetics in electrodeposition and electrodissolution, which plays an important role in the cyclability of batteries that use metal anodes.

Lydia L. Sohn received her doctoral degree in Physics from Harvard University in 1992. She was an NSF/NATO postdoctoral fellow at Delft University of Technology (1992-1993) and a postdoctoral fellow at AT&T Bell Laboratories (1993-1995) prior to joining the Physics faculty at Princeton University in 1995. Since 2003, Sohn has been a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley, where she now holds the Almy C. Maynard & Agnes Offield Maynard Chair in Mechanical Engineering and is a Core Member of the UCSF-UC Berkeley Graduate Program in Bioengineering and an Affiliated Member of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Precision Health Program. Her work focuses on developing and employing label-free, quantitative techniques to screen and identify single cells and extracellular vesicles for biomedical-research and clinical-diagnostic applications. Sohn has received numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER and the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award. Sohn is a member of the Women in Cell Biology Committee of the American Society of Cell Biology and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Abstract | More than 75% of women with newly diagnosed breast cancer are over the age of 50. Women who carry germline mutations have a lifetime risk as high 80% for developing breast cancer. Microfluidic applications in breast cancer have generally focused on diagnosis and therapeutic screening, and more recently, on recapitulating tumor microenvironments to study breast cancer biology. In this talk, I will describe how we have taken a different path: using microfluidics to assess a woman’s susceptibility for developing breast cancer. Specifically, I will describe mechano-node-pore sensing (mechano-NPS), a microfluidic platform that measures the modulated current pulse caused by a cell transiting a microfluidic channel that has been segmented by a series of nodes. One segment is narrower than a cell diameter and consequently, a cell must squeeze through that segment in order to transit the entire channel. Analysis of the modulated pulse provides information on a cell’s size, stiffness, and ability to recover from deformation. Mechano-NPS is able to distinguish sublineages of primary human mammary epithelial cells and the chronological age groups (i.e. “young” vs. “old”) of women from which these cells were derived—all based on the mechanical properties of the cells measured.

Dr. Jamie H. Warner was appointed as Director of the Texas Materials Institute in July 2022. He joined the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in January 2020 to lead the new Electron Microscopy Facility located in the Engineering Education and Research Center, Texas Materials Institute and the Cockrell School of Engineering. Prior to this he spent 13 years in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, where he held the position of Professor of Materials and led the Nanostructured Materials Group. His research focuses on the next generation of nanostructured materials with unique properties that will impact electronic, opto-electronic, and energy applications.

Abstract | Studying the structure of flow channels or pores that determine liquid transport is critical to build an accurate model of the underlying physics and chemistry of the systems. Advanced electron microscopy is the leading approach for visualizing structure. For many applications, pores for liquid flow are close to 1nm and are hard to visualize in 3D bulk solids. It is also challenging to include liquid phases during analysis with electron microscopy due to the vacuum environment. I will discuss how advanced transmission electron microscopy can be used to study accurate pore structure in 2D materials, recover the 3D structure of porous polymer membranes for desalination, and how cryo-TEM can be used to study liquid electrolyte within batteries. I will also briefly discuss the ability to study liquid environments in transmission electron microscopy directly using liquid cells. By using a variety of imaging modalities, it is possible to learn how liquid interacts with solid systems that are porous, how nanoparticles can behave in liquid systems, and see new insights into the liquid electrolyte electrochemistry in batteries.

Yuebing Zheng is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science and Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He holds the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professorship in Engineering #4. His group drives innovation in optics and photonics, advancing optical manipulation and measurement to transform scientific research and tackle pressing global challenges. They aim to (1) push the boundaries of knowledge in nanoscale light-matter interactions; (2) develop cutting-edge optical manipulation and measurement technologies; and (3) apply these technologies and the resulting materials, devices and systems across diverse fields. https://zheng.engr.utexas.edu 

Abstract | Opto-thermo-fluidics, integrating optics, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics, enables versatile manipulation and multifunctional measurement of matter across multiple scales. By harnessing light-induced thermal gradients and fluidic flows, our optothermal techniques provide unprecedented control over biological and synthetic systems, enhancing operational versatility, material applicability, and measurement precision. This talk will highlight applications in volumetric imaging, organism classification, cell-cell interaction profiling, and enantiodiscrimination of chiral molecules. Additionally, we will demonstrate how these capabilities drive advances in sustainable nanomanufacturing and materials innovation.