The creation of an interdisciplinary and international Center for Soft Matter Research makes physics the first field to get a boost from New York University’s $2.5 billion expansion plans. By hiring people in clusters rather than individually, according to NYU’s dean of arts and sciences Richard Foley, “the university can achieve what is often very difficult: rapidly and effectively building academic strength in several fields in the arts and sciences.”
The new center is intended as a counterpart to the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says David Pine, who joined NYU from UCSB. “You have this model that’s worked well for theoretical physicists. But not much has been attempted to make centers of this sort for experimenters,” he says. Pine, along with Paul Chaikin, who is moving from Princeton University, and David Grier, who came from the University of Chicago, is guiding the...
