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Bio: Professor Omar A. Saleh is a physicist and materials scientist with broad expertise in biomolecular and polymer science. Saleh received his B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1997, and his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton in 2003. His graduate studies were supported by a Hertz Fellowship. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, where he developed single-molecule experimental techniques to study motor protein/DNA interactions. He came to UC Santa Barbara in 2005, where he is now a full professor with appointments in the Materials and Physics Departments, along with a minority appointment in the Biomolecular Science and Engineering (BMSE) Program. He served as Director of the BMSE program from 2013 to 2017, and was an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Division of Biological Physics of the American Physical Society from 2013 to 2016. Since the summer of 2023, he is the Chair of the Materials Department. Saleh's research is focused on the molecular physics underlying biological systems, with particular experience in nucleic acids, protein/DNA interactions, motor proteins, biomolecular elasticity, and self-assembled biomolecular systems. His research achievements were recognized by an NSF CAREER award in 2008, by a Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Society in 2017, and by his selection as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2019 by the Division of Biological Physics

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Bio: Eva Kanso is a professor and the Z.H. Kaprielian Fellow in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California. While at USC, Kanso joined the Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) as an IPA rotator in Fall 2021. Prior to joining USC in 2005, Kanso held a two-year postdoctoral position in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech. She received a Ph.D. degree in 2003 and an M.S. degree in 1999 in Mechanical Engineering, as well as an M.A. degree in 2002 in Mathematics, all from the University of California at Berkeley. She obtained her Bachelor of Engineering degree from the American University of Beirut with distinction. Kanso held visiting positions at Princeton University in 2004, the Laboratoire LadHyX at the Ecole Polytechnique in 2015, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 2016-2017, the Simons Foundation in 2016-2017, and the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in 2021. Her research interests concern fundamental problems in the biophysics of cellular and subcellular processes and the physics of animal behavior, both at the individual and collection levels. A central theme in her work is the role of the mechanical environment, specifically the fluid medium and fluid-structure interactions, in shaping and driving biological functions.