Ella King, Ph.D.

Ella King is an incoming assistant professor at Northwestern University in the departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Soft Matter Research at New York University, where she works with David Grier. She received her Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University, advised by Michael Brenner. For her Ph.D., she developed inverse design methods for bio-inspired and non-equilibrium self-assembling materials, demonstrating for the first time how to directly and simultaneously design kinetics and structure in self-assembly. She also built theoretical tools that extract more information from existing experimental data, including methods for inferring interaction potentials from particle trajectories and for tracking particles with correlated motion. King’s work spans soft matter physics, materials design and biological physics.