Michael Ford, PhD

Staff scientist
Materials Science Division
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Materials scientist interested in intelligent soft matter

I hold a PhD in Materials from University of California, Santa Barbara. My interests broadly include soft matter synthesis and engineering for intelligent, multifunctional materials and science education. Outside of my work, I’m a camping/outdoors enthusiast and play around with photography from time-to-time. Find out more by clicking below.

News

• 08/2022 - My paper that described pulse shape discrimination in water-based liquid scintillators, where microemulsions allow for dispersion of an oil phase in water to form a transparent and homogeneous material, was published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A.

• 05/2022 - A collaboration with Caleb Chandler and Prof. Alan Sellinger led to a publication in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, focusing on plastic scintillators that use polyvinyltoluene as the matrix and can be cured using UV light

• 11/2021 - I presented my work on transparent polysiloxane inks for direct ink writing at MRS and was awarded a “Best Poster” award.

• 11/2021 - My first paper from my work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - where I’ve developed inks for direct ink writing of transparent elastomers - has been published in Advanced Materials Technologies

• 10/2021 - My invited review on functional polymers that facilitate intelligent behavior in soft machines has been published in a special Early Career Scholars in Materials Science edition of the Journal of Materials Research

• 09/2021 - I presented my research at the University of Chicago as part of the Rising Stars in Soft and Biological Matter Symposium.

• 08/2021 - I presented my work on transparent polysiloxane inks for direct ink writing at ACS.

• 03/2021 - Yunsik Ohm’s paper on a soft and electrically conductive hydrogel that is useful for soft robotics has been published in Nature Electronics

• 12/2020 - A collaboration with Cedric Ambulo and Prof. Taylor Ware led to a publication in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, which outlined 4D printing of composites that contain liquid metal and a liquid crystal elastomer.

• 10/2020 - My work that leverages sedimentation to permit multifunctionality in soft composites has been published in Advanced Materials.

• 09/2020 - Chengfeng Pan’s paper on energy generation using self-assembled elastomeric conductors has been published in Advanced Materials Technologies.

• 08/2020 - I presented my research at NC State as part of the Early Career Lecture Series.

• 07/2020 - Navid Moheb’s paper on network topology and electromechanical coupling has been published in Soft Matter.

• 07/2020 - I began working as a postdoctoral researcher with the High Performance Materials group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

• 05/2020 - My work that explored the effect of liquid metal droplet size on artificial soft muscle properties has been published in Soft Matter as an invited paper.

• 05/2020 - My work on morphology of functional OFET blends has been published in Chemistry of Materials.

• 04/2020 - Xiaonan Huang leads the effort on a review paper on soft materials for artificial muscles that was published in Journal of Materials Chemistry B.

• 03/2020 - Tess Hellebrekers’s work on soft magnetic skin trained with neural networks has been published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

• 03/2020 - Teresa Kent’s work on closed-loop control of LCE actuators has been published in Multifunctional Materials

• 12/2019 - I presented my work at MRS Boston.

• 11/2019 - My video on Liquid Metal Composites was selected as a finalist for the MRS SciVid competition.

• 11/2019 - The Soft Machines Lab visits Carnegie Science Center to host a table at SciTech Days.

• 11/2019 - I wrote an article for The Conversation highlighting materials with embodied intelligence.

• 10/2019 - My work on shape-morphing elastomers has been published in PNAS.

• 10/2019 - Chengfeng Pan’s work on silver-coated PDMS beads has been published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

• 09/2019 - Jiahe Liao and I taught a course on energy for wearable computers for the Gelfand Center’s Saturday Series.

• 09/2019 - I presented my work at ILCEC.

• 07/2019 - I led an interactive activity on energy for wearable computers for the Summer Engineering Experience for Girls.

• 01/2019 - Jiahe Liao and I taught a course on wearable computers for the Gelfand Center’s Saturday Series.

• 11/2018 - The Soft Machines Lab visits Carnegie Science Center to host a table at SciTech Days

• 08/2018 - I began working for the Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.

• 07/2018 - I finished teaching my course on research in polymer science & engineering for the Science & Engineering Research Academy.

• 05/2018 - I successfully defended my PhD.

Let's Chat

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