Living active matter
Cellular motion, cytoskeletal dynamics, collective migration, and biological organization far from equilibrium.
Mayagüez, Puerto Rico · March 2027
Frontiers of Living and Colloidal Active Systems
An international conference open to researchers, students, and others interested in how energy, motion, and collective behavior organize matter across living and synthetic systems.
Exact dates, venue, and registration schedule will be announced after confirmation.
When
March 2027
Dates pending confirmation
Where
Mayagüez, Puerto Rico
Hosted by UPRM
Format
Focused, interdisciplinary
Talks · posters · discussion
Scientific scope
Where living dynamics meet engineered matter.
Active matter connects physics, chemistry, engineering, and biology through systems whose components consume energy and generate motion. The conference is designed to create sustained exchange across communities that do not always meet in the same room.
Colloidal active systems
Self-propelled particles, active suspensions, interactions, assembly, and transport.
Shared principles
Emergence, fluctuations, control, materials design, modeling, and experimental tools across scales.
Why Puerto Rico · Why the west
A scientific meeting designed around access, place, and sustained exchange.
Puerto Rico offers a distinctive setting for an international research conference, connecting a globally distributed scientific community with a major U.S. research and education ecosystem. It is accessible from major continental gateways and can support a more cost-conscious meeting than many traditional conference destinations. International participants should confirm the U.S. entry requirements that apply to their citizenship and travel status.
Locating the conference in western Puerto Rico brings the active-matter community close to the University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez. That proximity expands opportunities for local undergraduate and graduate students to engage with visiting researchers, strengthens the international visibility of research conducted in Puerto Rico, and connects the meeting to an established center of science and engineering.
The west also supports the conference’s collaborative format. A concentrated venue near Mayagüez can keep lectures, posters, meals, and informal conversation close together, creating the sustained interaction needed for new ideas to move across countries and across theory, experiment, computation, biology, physics, and engineering.
Explore western Puerto Rico travel planning →Preliminary architecture
Built for exchange, not just presentation.
The developing program combines invited and contributed talks with poster sessions, structured discussion, and generous informal time.
Explore the program framework →- Day 1 Foundations, shared language, opening sessions
- Day 2 Cross-cutting themes, posters, discussion
- Day 3 Frontiers, synthesis, future collaborations
Organizing team
Across institutions and disciplines.
Ubaldo M. Córdova-Figueroa
University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez
Igor Aronson
Penn State
Ayusman Sen
Penn State
Image credits: Igor Aronson portrait, Penn State Engineering; Ayusman Sen portrait, Penn State Materials Science and Engineering.
Participation support
Broadening access to the meeting.
Limited, competitive participant support is planned. Criteria and application details will be published once finalized.
How support will work
Support & co-organization
