Steve Granick

Biosketch

Steve Granick is an American scientist and educator. He joined the University of Massachusetts in 2023 after serving as Director of the IBS Center for Soft and Living Matter, a blue-sky research institute that is the Korean version of a Max-Planck Institute. At the University of Illinois (until 2015) he was the Racheff Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering with joint appointments in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics. Among his major awards are APS Fellow (1992), Paris-Sciences Medal (2002), APS national Polymer Physics Prize (2009), NSF Special Creativity Award (2012), and ACS national Colloid and Surface Chemistry Prize (2013). He served as Chair of the DOE Council on Materials Panel on Polymers at Interfaces (2002) and Chair of the APS Division of Polymer Physics (2006). He holds and has held Honorary or Visiting Positions at numerous universities in Europe and Asia. His education was at Princeton University (B.A. 1978) and the University of Wisconsin (Ph.D. 1982). His doctoral study was with J.D. Ferry, the most prominent polymer scientist of his generation. His postdoctoral study was with P.-G. de Gennes.

Research Interests

Research interests range from the study of active matter to the chemistry and physics of visualized macromolecules, vesicles, and supracolloidal materials. Earlier research focused on confined liquids, nanorheology, molecular tribology. Other early work concerned molecular mobility at polymer surfaces. This progressed to later studies showing how biological membranes interact with their environments. The most recent research involves soft and living matter and also biomolecular materials. It explores imaging, assembly, behavior and interactions of molecules, colloidal particles, and their assemblies, at rest and driven outside equilibrium.