NEWS & EVENTS


  • The O'Hern group's research on computational modeling of proteins was featured in an article in the Yale Engineering Magazine . See page 56.
  • Prof. O'Hern has been elected as a 2017 Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). See the news story on the Yale SEAS website.
  • Prof. O'Hern will give a Tilde Cafe science talk on "The Physics of Bird Nests" on March 11, 2017 at the James Blacsktone Memorial Library in Branford, CT.
  • Meng Fan was selected as a finalist for the student speaker award by the American Physical Society's Topical Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics at the March Meeting 2017.
  • Prof. O'Hern and Dr. Thibault Bertrand recently delivered a public lecture entitled "The Mysteries of Sand", which was sponsored by The Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena and Yale's Pathways to Science. The lecture can be watched here.
  • A figure from our recent paper D. Caballero, A. Virrueta, C. S. O'Hern, and L. Regan, "Steric interactions alone determine side chain conformations in protein cores", Protein Eng. Des. Sel. 29 (2016) 367 appeared on the cover of the September 2016 issue of PEDS. The work was featured on the Yale SEAS website.
  • Prof. O'Hern will organize the 4th International Workshop on Packing Problems, to be held at Yale University in July 2018.
  • In April, 2015, Prof. O'Hern's work on the structural and mechanical properties of birds' nests was highlighted on the Yale SEAS news website.
  • During the APS March meeting of 2015, graduate student Thibault Bertrand was selected as a finalist for the American Physical Society’s (APS) Topical Group on Statistical & Nonlinear Physics (GSNP) Student Speaker Award for his presentation titled "Shear Jamming in Particulate Media." See the news item on the Yale SEAS website.
  • In 2015, the National Science Foundation renewed the REU site award, "Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site: Convergence of Research at the Interface of the Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences," for another three years, until 2018. The site is co-directed by Profs. O'Hern and Lynne Regan. See the news item on the Yale Daily News website and on the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science news site.
  • In collaboration with Prof. Robert Behringer from Duke University and Prof. Lou Kondic of the New Jersey Institute of Technolodgy, Prof. Corey O'Hern has been awarded an NSF grant to organize and host the symposium "Statics and Dynamics of Dense Granular Material" at the 2015 European Solid Mechanics Conference (ESMC), in Madrid, Spain. See the news item on the Yale SEAS News website and on the Yale Scientific Website.
  • In the summer 2014, Prof. Corey O'Hern was awarded a research grant, "Self-Assembly in the Macro-World", from the W. M. Keck Foundation. This work aims to establish the first comprehensive, theoretical framework for predicting how macroscale particles self-assemble into large solid state-like arrangements. See the news item on the Yale News website.
  • Prof. O'Hern organized the Flint Visitors Fund Lecture Series on Granular Materials by Prof. Mark Shattuck, Yale University, in April 2013.
  • Prof. O'Hern's travels for the Summer and Fall 2012 included the Physics Colloquium and seminar at the Center for Nonlinear and Complex Systems at Duke University in September 2012, the Minisymposium on "Comparison of plastiticity and intermittency in crystalline and amorphous solids," 22nd Annual International Workshop on the Mechanics of Materials in Baltimore, MD in September 2012, the Symposium on "Dynamics and Jamming in Complex Environments" at the American Chemical Society Meeting in Philadelphia, PA in August 2012, the Gordon Research Conference on Granular & Granular-Fluid Flow in Davidson, NC in July 2012.
  • Prof. O'Hern co-organized with Robert Behringer (Duke) and Lou Kondic (NJIT) the Minisymposium, "New methods to quantify the structural and mechanical properties of dense granular media" at the 8th EUROMECH Solid Mechanics Conference at Graz University of Technology, Austria in July 2012.
  • Prof. O'Hern traveled extensively over the Summer and Fall 2011 through the Spring 2012, including the Workshop on "Large Fluctuations and Collective Phenomena in Disordered Materials", University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, May 2011; Summer School on "Granular Flows---From Simulations to Astrophysical Applications," University of Maryland, June 2011; Conference on "Sphere Packing and Amorphous Materials," Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, July 2011; Workshop on "Complex Dynamics of Dislocations, Defects, and Interfaces," Los Alamos National Laboratory, November 2011; Workshop on the "Dissipative Rheology of Foams, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, January 2012; James A. Krumhansl School and Symposium, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India, February 2012.
  • Prof. O'Hern was awarded the 2011 APS-IUSSTF Professorship Award in Physics.
  • Prof. O'Hern was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure effective July 1, 2011.
  • Prof. O'Hern visited Profs. Ludovic Berthier and Francesco Zampoini and gave presentations at the Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, Universite Montpellier and Laboratoire de Physique Theorique, Ecole Normale Superieure, respectively, in June 2011.
  • Along with Prof. Bulbul Chakraborty (Brandeis), Narayanan Menon (UMass-Amherst), Sriram Ramaswamy (IIsc-Bangalore), Martin van Hecke (Leiden), Prof. Corey O'Hern co-organized a week-long workshop "Fluctuations and Response in Active Materials: From Driven Granular Systems to Swarming Bacteria" in June, 2011 at the Lorentz Center at Leiden University to explore similarities between active and granular materials.
  • Prof. O'Hern co-organized the summer 2011 program entitled "Fluctuations and Response in Granular Materials" at the Aspen Center for Physics along with Robert Behringer (Duke), Lou Kondic (NJIT), and Narayanan Menon (UMass-Amherst) and the Summer 2011 Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting "Dynamic DNA Packaging across Kingdoms" at Asilomar, Pacific Grove, CA in July 2011 with Lynne Regan (Yale) and Linda Kenney (UIC).
  • Prof. O'Hern presented a number of invited talks at conferences and workshops in the Fall 2010 and Spring 2011: Dynamics Days, UNC, January 2011; Recent Progress in the Physics of Dissipative Particles, Yukawa Institute of Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, November 2010; New England Workshop on Mechanics of Materials and Structures, Harvard University, September 2010; Particulate Materials in Extreme Environments, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, September 2010.
  • Prof. O'Hern's research on the structure of Bird Nests was highlighted in the 2011 edition of the Yale Engineering Magazine (p. 21).
  • Prof. O'Hern's research was highlighted by Yale's High Performance Computing Initiative, "An HPC pioneer at Yale"
  • Prof. O'Hern gave the condensed matter seminar in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania on October 6, 2010.
  • Prof. O'Hern along with co-PIs Profs. Robert Behringer (Duke), Wolfgang Losert (Maryland), and Lou Kondic (NJIT) were awarded a grant, "Microstructure, Fluidization, and Control of Penetrator Trajectories in Granular Media", from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency with duration April 1, 2010 through March 31, 2015.
  • Prof. Corey O'Hern spent much of the early summer 2010 attending national and international meetings including the Program on The Physics of Glasses (May 10-28, 2010), Special session, "Dense packings of non-spherical particles" at 25th annual Shanks Conference on "Optimal configurations on the sphere and other manifolds" (May 17-20), Special Session on "Topological and Computational Dyanmics" at the American Mathematical Society Eastern Section Meeting (May 22-23, 2010), the Mini-symposium on "Mesoscopic Self Assembly" at the SIAM Conference on Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science (May 23-26, 2010), and the Conference on "Particulate Matter: Does Dimension Matter?" at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (May 31 - June 4, 2010).
  • Prof. O'Hern visited the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory the week of April 26, 2010, and gave a colloquium about his work on polymer collapse and protein folding.
  • Master's Physics student Thibault Bertrand from Ecole Normale Superieure Cachan was a visiting assistant in research from April 15 - August 1, 2010. He conducted simulations and experiments on anisotropic granular media.  
  • The 2010 American Physical Society March Meeting was held in Portland, OR, March 15-19, 2010.  The O'Hern group presented six talks from S. S. Ashwin, Rob Hoy, Mitch Mailman, Katja Schaefer, Carl Schreck, and Mark Shattuck.  Rob's presentation was an invited talk in the GSNP Focus Session on Jamming. 
  • Prof. O'Hern gave the condensed matter seminar in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University on March 10, 2010.
  • The 42nd New England Complex Fluids Workshop was held at Yale on March 5, 2010.  It was co-organized by Profs. Eric Dufrsne, Corey O'Hern, and Chinedum Osuji. Speakers included Michael Brenner (Harvard), Julio Fernandez (Columbia), and Michael Choma (Yale). 
  • Prof. Scott Milner from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Penn State University visited the O'Hern Lab and give a Mechanical Engineering Seminar on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 2:30P in Mason Lab, Room 107. Scott is an expert in theoretical polymer physics.
  • On February 17-18, 2010 Prof. Corey O'Hern participated in a DARPA sponsored workshop on granular science to identify breakthrough research areas in Arlington, VA.
  • On Friday, January 22, 2010, Prof. Corey O'Hern visited Emory University and gave the Physics Department colloquium. 
  • O'Hern group members Carl Schreck and Dr. S. S. Ashwin attended the Winter School on Glass Formers and Glasses at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research January 4-20, 2010.
  • Prof. Corey O'Hern and colleague Jerzy Blawzdziewz were awarded a research grant "Collaborative Research: Experiment, Simulation, and Theory of Slowly Driven Granular Materials---From Microstate Statistics to Macroscopic Properties" from the National Science Foundation Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.  This collaborative work with experimentalist Prof. Mark Shattuck from the Department of Physics, CCNY will develop novel statistical mechanics descriptions for granular systems by decomposing macroscopic systems into small subsystems.  See the news item on the SEAS website.
  • We are happy to announce that Prof. Mark Shattuck from the Physics Department at CCNY will continue spending at least one day per week in Mason Lab at Yale SEAS.  This is part of an ongoing collaboration that began in 2007.  We are also looking forward to hosting Prof. Bulbul Chakraborty from the Physics Department at Brandeis University in the Spring 2011.