From December 3 to December 6, Prof. An-Chang Shi from McMaster University in Canada visited AISMST and lectured the four-day short course titled “Introduction to Phases and Phase Transitions of Polymers”. 

Prof. Shi introduced that polymers are a class of soft matter, which are ubiquitous in technological, biological and daily applications. Polymeric materials exhibit rich phase behavior including phase separation and self-assembly of ordered phases. Understanding the phase behavior of polymeric systems is an important and active research area in soft condensed matter physics. Furthermore, polymers provide an interesting playground for the development and application of soft matter theory, which is applicable to various soft matter systems.

During the four-day course, Prof. Shi presented four topics: “Introduction to polymers and their phase behavior: from macroscopic phase separation to self-assembly”, “Introduction of phase transition theory: thermodynamics and statistical mechanics”, “Mean-field theory of phase transitions: Order parameter, Landau theory, self-consistent field theory of polymers”, and “Self-assembly of block copolymers”. Prof. Shi elaborated various phase transition phenomena emerged in polymeric systems and the underlying theoretical foundations. The course was very successful and attracted many AISMST faculties and students to take. Some scholars from other universities such as Nanjing University, Donghua University etc. also came to Guangzhou to listen to Prof. Shi’s course. 

Prof. Shi is a world renowned soft matter theorist. His research interests include theory of phases and phase transition of soft matter, self-assembly and morphology of block copolymers, statistical mechanics of conformation of macromolecules, and theory of bilayer membranes. He has published over 200 papers (~7000 citations) in peer-reviewed journals including PNAS, PRL, JACS, and given more than 50 invited talks in international conferences. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010.