Dr. Jeffrey Richards received his PhD in August 2014 from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. After graduating from UW, he performed his postdoctoral work at the University of Delaware and the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, MD as a National Research Council Fellow. Dr. Richards joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern in 2018 where his current research focuses on engineering the properties of soft materials for electrochemical energy storage applications. During his time at Northwestern, Dr. Richards has been awarded the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award and the American Chemical Society’s Distinguished New Investigator Award.

Thibaut Divoux, a CNRS research scientist since 2012, specializes in soft matter physics and experimental rheology. His research has generated original insights on amorphous soft materials both from a fundamental perspective, and in various industrial sectors including pharmaceuticals (e.g., agarose gels), food (e.g., yoghurts), construction (e.g., tile adhesive), and energy storage (e.g., conductive suspensions of carbon black or graphite oxide). His expertise encompasses complex fluids, dense suspensions, gels and soft composites that he investigates by rheometry coupled with local techniques such as velocimetry, dielectric measurements, and IR spectroscopy. Additionally, he performs local mechanical tests using atomic force microscopy, micro- and nano-indentation to understand how local mechanical properties translate in the macroscopic response of these viscoelastic materials. He was awarded the 2018 Metzner Prize of the Society of Rheology for his work on the shear-induced yielding transition in Soft Glassy Materials. Since 2023, he is serving as co-director of the GDR SoPhy, aiming to unite national and international research efforts in physics of soft precursors for hard materials with over 300 members spread in 60 laboratories.