Ella King, Ph.D.

Ella King is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Soft Matter Research at New York University, working with David Grier, and is a visiting scholar at Flatiron Institute. She received her Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University with Michael Brenner.

King’s work spans soft matter physics, materials design and biological physics. For her Ph.D., she developed inverse design methods for bio-inspired and non-equilibrium self-assembling materials, and showed 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. She has been recognized with an NSF Graduate Fellowship, among the “Rising Stars in Soft and Biological Matter,” with an “Emerging Soft Matter Excellence Award,” and with a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching.