Dr Avishek Das has joined the Department of Physics and the Durham Centre for Soft Matter as an Assistant Professor.

Work from four of the soft matter research groups in Durham was presented at the SoftComp annual network meeting 2026, held in Zakopane, Poland, from 18 to 21 May.

Tiny unavoidable imperfections in thin liquid films cause them to rupture far sooner than would otherwise be expected. Computational research on this phenomenon by DCSM's Vatsal Sanjay and his coworkers at the University of Twente (Netherlands), City College of New York (USA) and Sorbonne University (France) has been highlighted by the SoftComp network.

Research showing how soft materials bridge liquid and elastic behaviour on impact with a surface has been highlighted by the SoftComp network. The study was carried out by DCSM's Vatsal Sanjay and his coworkers at the University of Twente (Netherlands), EPFL (Switzerland) and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation (Germany).