Cornelis Storm

Kees Storm is the Dean of the Department of Applied Physics & Eindhoven School of Education at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Next to this he leads the Soft Matter and Biological Physics group where the focus is on mechanical properties of biological soft matter: proteins, polymers, membranes, fibrous networks and, ultimately, tissues. The research focuses on their microstructure in relation to their behaviour. Through 'reverse engineering', mimicking Nature's design, Storm aims to design new materials with new, unexpected and lifelike properties using synthetic non-living building blocks.

In Storm's research multiscale modeling is crucial since phenomena in biological materials generally span multiple scales - both spatial and temporal. His group tries to cover the essential physics at each of these scales, with particular attention to tying them together into a single, coherent multiscale scheme. Topics in the program run the range from single motors and protein polymers all the way to tissue-scale finite element studies.

Living biological materials are very special. They last for a lifetime, literally, through constant renewal and self-repair. They provide tremendous inspiration for new materials design.