New publication: "Active colloids in liquid crystals" by Oleg D. Lavrentovich. Click here to download the full article. Highlights: Liquid crystals enable electrokinetics with the velocity proportional to the field squared, Director distortions generate space charge in the presence of an electric field, Brownian motion in a liquid crystal is both anisotropic and anomalous, Bacterial trajectories in liquid crystals are controlled by the director, Living liquid crystals feature periodic band instability and topological turbulence.

Chenhui Peng (left) presenting the "Theory and Experiments of Topologically Driven Flows in Nematic Suspensions" and Dr.Shuang Zhou (right) presenting "Fine structure of the topological defect core: Disclination in lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal" at the APS March Meeting 2016.

Group photo after Shuang Zhou's Ph.D. defense at the Liquid Crystal Institute. Click here to watch the video of his presentation on "Lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals: from viscoelastic properties to living liquid crystals."

Chirality amplification and detection by tactoids of lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals has been published by Chenhui Peng et al in Soft Matter and highlighted at the cover page.