Daniel Beller
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Daniel Beller is the Carrier Postdoctoral Fellow in Applied Mathematics at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Daniel earned his Bachelor's Degree in physics and mathematics in 2010 from Brandeis University. There, he became interested in soft condensed matter while studying chiral properties of virus-based colloidal liquid crystal phases with Zvonimir Dogic and Robert Meyer. He also computationally modeled the chaotic advection of immiscible fluids with Ben Vollmayr-Lee at Bucknell University as part of an NSF REU. From 2010 to 2014, Daniel was a graduate student in physics at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Physics and Astronomy, where with Randall Kamien he studied defects in nematic and smectic liquid crystals, and these defects' self-assembly, through theory and simulation. Upon completing his Ph.D., he moved to Harvard University, where he works with David Nelson on modeling the physics and geometry of plastic deformation in solid tubes that have crystalline order in their walls, via the nucleation and motion of dislocation defects. This effort includes ongoing discussions with the Manoharan group on the assembly of chiral tubular crystals of colloidal particles, with possible mechanical reconfigurability and application in optical metamaterials. Daniel organizes Harvard's Widely Applied Math Seminar, is a frequent contributor at New England Complex Fluids workshops, is part of the Membership Committee of the American Physical Society's Topical Group on Soft Matter, and regularly interacts with researchers in experimental soft matter at Harvard's Squishy Physics seminar series.