Nader Taheri Qazvini, Ph.D.

Nader Taheri Qazvini received his BS and MS degrees and PhD (2006) in polymer engineering from the Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran where he worked on the glass transition behavior of glassy polymer networks. Then, he began his career as Assistant Professor in the College of Science at the University of Tehran, focusing on the dynamics of polymer chains under different one-dimensional, two-dimensional and random nano-confinements. In 2011, he was awarded a sabbatical leave from the University of Tehran to collaborate with the Laboratory of Food and Soft Materials (Mezzenga group) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-Zurich (ETHZ) on self-healing soft materials based on electrostatic interactions. He then joined the Fredberg Lab at Harvard University as a visiting scientist. During his stay at Harvard from October 2012, working with an interdisciplinary team, he tried to expand the physics of soft glassy materials into the collective motion of cells within well-characterized endothelial and epithelial cell monolayer systems. In September 2014, he moved to Chicago to join Professor Juan de Pablo's and Professor Matthew Tirrell's groups at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. His current work focuses on functional biohybrid soft materials driven by complex coacervation.