Bridging Natural and Engineered Particulate Systems

Grains are everywhere. While many natural materials are granular, such as sand, regolith, snow, and soil, numerous others of critical economic importance use granular materials as feedstock, such as in construction (e.g. metals, glass, concrete) and consumables (e.g. food, medicines, cosmetics). Frameworks developed for granular materials can also be applied to seemingly unrelated systems such as traffic, crowded cellular environments, and foams. Understanding the complex behavior of granular matter is thus an interdisciplinary challenge spanning physics, earth science, engineering, biology and other areas.

The 12th Granular Matter GRC brings together people from research and applied backgrounds to discuss four overarching goals:

(i) Obtain a fundamental understanding of the physics of granular matter.

(ii) Develop predictive tools for modeling industrial and geological processes.

(iii) Design innovative ways of measuring, manipulating, and using granular materials.

(iv) Explore the frontiers where granular research intersects with the study of living systems, space and earth sciences, the formulation of transformative consumer products, and artificial intelligence.