Jacinta Conrad is a physical scientist studying transport and dynamics within soft, complex materials and matrices. Using a broad range of microscopy, rheology, scattering, and computational methods, her group seeks to understand how microscale particles, including colloids, nanoparticles, bacteria, viruses, and proteins, explore and/or transport through confined and crowded environments containing polymers, macromolecules, or other dispersed species. Insights gained from fundamental studies of these non-equilibrium processes inform the design of new materials for preventing fouling and corrosion, for remediating environmental damage, and for sensitively diagnosing disease.
She earned an SB in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and MA and PhD degrees in Physics from Harvard. She worked as a postdoctoral associate in MatSe at Illinois before starting her faculty position at the University of Houston (UH). Currently, she is Frank M. Tiller Professor of Chemical Engineering at UH, the Chair-Elect of the American Physical Society Division of Soft Matter (DSOFT), and an Associate Editor for ACS Applied Nano Materials, and was named a Fellow of the Society of Rheology in 2021.