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Eric Dufresne

Professor

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

headshot of Eric Dufresne aspect ratio 1-1
headshot of Eric Dufresne aspect ratio 1-1
Graduate Field Affiliations
Biophysics
Materials Science and Engineering
Physics

Biography

Eric joined the Cornell faculty in the summer 2023. He is a member of the departments of Materials Sciences and Engineering and Physics. Before coming to Cornell in 2023, he was a professor at ETH Zürich and Yale University. He was a postdoc at Harvard, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and was a undergrad at Yale.

Research Interests

The Laboratory of Soft and Living Materials focuses on biological and biologically-inspired materials.  Our research is focused on quantitative physical experiments but integrates elements of cell biology, biochemistry, and theory as needed.

  • Advanced Materials
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Biomechanics and Mechanobiology
  • Colloids and Interfacial Science
  • Materials Synthesis and Processing
  • Mechanics of Biological Materials
  • Molecular and Cellular Engineering
  • Polymers and Soft Matter

Select Publications

  • Etienne Jambon-Puillet, Andrea Testa, Charlotta M Lorenz, Robert W Style, Aleksander Rebane, Eric Robert Dufresne, “Phase-Separated Droplets Swim to Their Dissolution” bioRxiv (2023) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.18.549556v1

  • Carla Fernández-Rico, Sanjay Schreiber, Hamza Oudich, Charlotta Lorenz, Alba Sicher, Tianqi Sai, Stefanie Heyden, Pietro Carrara, Laura De Lorenzis, Robert W. Style, Eric R. Dufresne “Elastic Microphase Separation Produces Robust Bicontinuous Materials” arXiv (2023) https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11419

  • Maria Feofilova, Silvan Schüepp, Roman Schmid, Florian Hacker, Hendrik T. Spanke, Nicolas Bain, Katharine E. Jensen, Eric R. Dufresne “Geometrical frustration of phase-separated domains in Coscinodiscus diatom frustules” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (2022) https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2201014119

  • Thomas J. Böddeker, Kathryn A. Rosowski, Doris Berchtold, Leonidas Emmanouilidis, Yaning Han, Frédéric H. T. Allain, Robert W. Style, Lucas Pelkmans, Eric R. Dufresne ” Non-specific adhesive forces between filaments and membraneless organelles” Nature Physics (2022) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01537-8

  • C. Fernandez-Rico, T. Sai, A. Sicher, R. W. Style, and E. R. Dufresne “Putting the Squeeze on Phase Separation”  JACS Au (2021) https://doi.org/10.1021/jacsau.1c00443

Eric R. Dufresne's Google Scholar

Select Awards and Honors

  • Fellow, American Physical Society 2022
  • Soft Matter Lectureship, Royal Society of Chemistry 2014
  • Graduate Mentor Award in the Natural Sciences, Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2014
  • Dylan Hixon ’88 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences, Yale College 2013