The international summer school on soft matter is back ! After a cancellation in the summer of 2020, we are hopeful that we will be able to organize it in July 2022. All 2020 speakers have accepted to participate and we are now accepting preregistrations. The maximum number of attendees is not yet fixed (pandemic dependent) but we hope that the situation will be clarified in the late spring.

This interdisciplinary summer school, targeted at PhD students, post-docs and young researchers in the field, will cover in a pedagogical way, a range of topics in chemistry, physics and mechanics needed to investigate the synthesis, characterization and macroscopic properties of soft and stretchable materials and objects at the continuum scale.

Soft and stretchable materials have recently become an emerging and dynamic area of soft matter. In the last decade the field has exploded and new classes of materials have emerged faster than their properties have been understood. Building a framework of tools adapted to the investigation of the structure, dynamics and properties of these soft solids in the bulk and at interfaces over a wide range of length and time scales has become essential for the education of a soft matter scientist.

We jointly propose, with the GI-CoRE Global Station for Soft Matter of Hokkaido University and the CNRS, a multi-scale approach of the physics and mechanics of soft materials based on soft matter science, including knowledge-based material design, structural and dynamical characterization and mechanical properties both at the macroscopic and mesoscale as well as at interfaces.

Rather than being very specialized, the lectures will provide the students with the interdisciplinary culture that is needed to tackle multi-scale approaches of the properties of these complex materials. The lectures will be accompanied by poster sessions where the attendees will have a chance to present their findings and discuss their research projects with the lecturers.

Main topics

• Polymer and soft matter physics
• Design of soft materials
• Multi-dynamics in soft matter
• Characterization of hierarchical structure
• Large deformation mechanics of soft materials
• Multi-scale simulations of soft networks
• Soft surfaces and interfaces