SMILE – Soft Matter, Intelligence and Learning for Engineered Materials – is a new international research group funded by I-SITE Lorraine and jointly supported by the University of Lorraine and the University of Liège.
It builds on the long-standing scientific collaboration between its two founders:
– Sébastien Kiesgen de Richter, researcher in the Powder and Suspension Flows team at LEMTA, professor at the University of Lorraine, and member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF)
– Nicolas Vandewalle, director of the GRASP laboratory, professor at the University of Liège, and Francqui Research Professor (the Belgian equivalent of the IUF)
Soft matter refers to easily deformable materials such as gels, foams, pastes, suspensions, or granular media whose mechanical behavior lies between that of a solid and a liquid, and which can change in stiffness or flow depending on the stresses and their environment.