Naomi Oppenheimer, Ph.D.

Naomi Oppenheimer is an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University. Her research interests are in continuum theories, statistical mechanics, soft matter, and complex fluids, mostly in the context of biology-inspired physical systems. She uses theoretical analytical tools and numerical simulations, with a dash of experiments.

Her undergraduate studies were in physics and chemistry at Tel Aviv University. They were followed by Ph.D. studies at Tel Aviv University on the topic of “Dynamics of biology-inspired suspensions” under the supervision of Prof. Haim Diamant. The thesis focused on flows and correlations within heterogeneous fluid (bio)membranes. She continued to a postdoctoral position with Prof. Thomas Witten at the University of Chicago. There she studied “programmed” elastic networks of springs as a model of shapable sheets – elastic sheets that crumple into a desired shape. Subsequently, she worked with Prof. Howard Stone at Princeton. They developed theories for the motion of a hot sphere in a viscous fluid, and for the dynamics of chemical reactions in membranes. She then joined the Flatiron Institute at the Simons Foundation, where she worked with Prof. Michael Shelley on vorticity in membranes (analytical theory and numerical simulations), and on fluid-suspended particles moving near membrane (theory and experiments).