Machine learning is making a major impact in materials research. I review current progress
across a selection of areas of ubiquitous soft matter. When applied to particle tracking …

Many soft materials yield under mechanical loading, but how this transition from solid-like
behavior to liquid-like behavior occurs can vary significantly. Understanding the physics of …

Soft materials are usually defined as materials made of mesoscopic entities, often self-
organised, sensitive to thermal fluctuations and to weak perturbations. Archetypal examples …

A fundamental challenge regarding disordered solids is predicting macroscopic yield—the
point at which elastic behaviour changes to plastic behaviour—from the microscopic …

We develop a framework to study the mechanical response of athermal amorphous solids
via a coupling of mesoscale and microscopic models. Using measurements of coarse …

Understanding the origin of stress drop of fault gouges may offer deeper insights into many
geophysical processes such as earthquakes. Microslips of sheared granular gouges were …

From soft polymeric gels to hardened cement paste, amorphous solids under constant load
exhibit a pronounced time-dependent deformation called creep. The microscopic …

Soft network materials exist in numerous forms ranging from polymer networks, such as
elastomers, to fiber networks, such as collagen. In addition, in colloidal gels, an underlying …

Slowly sheared granular materials deform via intermittent slip avalanches, characterized by
repetitive cycles of elastic loading interrupted by sudden stress drops. Although many …

Folded protein hydrogels are prime candidates as tuneable biomaterials but it is unclear to
what extent their mechanical properties have mesoscopic, as opposed to molecular origins …