Â鶹AV

, director of Â鶹AV¡¯s , has been named a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the world¡¯s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals.

AAAS fellows are recognized for ¡°their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching and technology to administration in academia, industry and government to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.¡± This year¡¯s class, , includes 471 scientists, engineers, and innovators across 24 disciplinary sections. 

Since its launch in 2022, Smalyukh¡ªalso a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder¡ªhas been leading WPI-SKCM?, where researchers combine mathematical knot theory, chirality, and a vision for a more sustainable future to explore nature¡¯s inner workings, create new materials, advance medical treatments, and address pressing global challenges. His research spans a wide range of topics, including liquid crystals, magnets, colloids, metamaterials, bacterial biofilms, knot topology, chirality, photonics, renewable energy, and the development of new characterization techniques.

He has also been named a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), and Optica (formerly OSA), and has won many awards, such as the NASA iTech Award and the Presidential Early Career Award from the Office of Science and Technology of the U.S. White House.

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Smalyukh said he is honored by the selection: ¡°Throughout the years, I especially enjoyed multidisciplinary fusion research and fruitful collaborations with scientists from SKCM? at Â鶹AV and all over the world, especially young researchers like students and postdocs."

About the International Institute for Sustainability with Knotted Chiral Meta Matter (WPI-SKCM?) Â鶹AV

While introducing a new research paradigm of ¡°knotted chiral meta matter,¡± WPI-SKCM? aspires to create artificial materials by design to help address challenging global problems, like the growing energy demand and climate change. By knotting and knitting physical fields and molecules, much like in the Japanese art form of Mizuhiki, we enable new physical behavior and desirable properties that overcome nature¡¯s limitations, such as enabling thermal superinsulation that could save energy for heating and cooling buildings. Recreating natural phenomena in experimentally accessible systems leads to insights into the fundamental laws of nature at scales from its smallest building blocks to the entire Universe. Learn more: