Dr. Xiaoming Mao

Biography

Professor Xiaoming Mao's research interests encompass theoretical condensed matter physics, theoretical complex systems, and theoretical biological physics. His work focuses primarily on soft condensed matter, materials physics, and statistical mechanics. Current projects within his group center on understanding soft elasticity and the fundamental principles of self-assembly. A key feature of his research is the exploration of isostaticity, where the number of degrees of freedom in a system equals the number of constraints, leading to a rich array of physical phenomena including floppy modes, critical behavior, and conformal invariance. This research is crucial for investigating a wide variety of real materials, including jammed solids, glasses, fiber networks, and framework-structure crystals. His group also aims to engineer novel materials based on these principles. Moreover, the self-assembly project focuses on the fundamental physics behind the spontaneous formation of open structures, utilizing tools from condensed matter physics to tackle challenges related to entropic effects and the selection of open structures for innovative designs in self-assembled materials.

Research Interests