Group Leader
Patrick Charbonneau
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Ph.D. Harvard University, 2006
B.Sc. McGill University, 2001
CV (pdf) | Contact
Patrick Charbonneau is professor of chemistry and physics at Duke University. Originally from Montreal, he obtained a Ph.D. in chemical physics with David Reichman at Harvard in 2006 and was then a Marie-Curie Fellow with Daan Frenkel at Amolf, in Amsterdam, before moving to Durham in 2008.
Charbonneau’s main research is in the fields of soft matter and statistical physics. Using theory and numerical simulations, he notably studies colloidal and protein self-assembly and was a principal investigator of the Simons Collaboration on Cracking the Glass Problem. He has thus far authored over a 100 peer-reviewed publications, and co-organized a number of international meetings on these topics. A science history enthusiast, he curated the exhibit Seeing the Invisible: 50 Years of Macromolecular Visualization, is leading an oral history project entitled The History of Replica Symmetry Breaking in Physics, and is co-editing a book about Women in the History of Quantum Physics. Once in a while, he also gets to teach about the science of cooking and the history of chemistry. His investigation of the history of North American confections stems from the interplay of these various pursuits.
Since joining Duke, Charbonneau has earned a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Sloan Fellowship, and an Oak Ridge National Lab Ralph E. Powe award. He has been granted various visiting scientist positions and has twice been named Journal of Chemical Physics Top Reviewer. He is an APS fellow.
Undergraduate Students
Anna Brown
Office: 5328 FFSC
Master’s (Laurea) Students
Guglielmo Mennella
La Sapienza
Former Members
Dr. Mingyuan Zheng
Ph.D. student (Ph.D., 2023)
Dr. Yi Hu
Ph.D. student (Ph.D., 2021)
Dr. Irem Altan
Ph.D. student (Ph.D., 2019)
Dr. Lin Fu
Ph.D. student (Ph.D., 2017)
Dr. Yuan Zhuang
Ph.D. student (Ph.D., 2016)
Dr. Diana Fusco
Ph.D. student (Ph.D., 2014)
Prof. Kai Zhang
Ph.D. student (Ph.D., 2012)
Prof. Joyjit Kundu
Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2019)
Dr. Sho Yaida
Postdoctoral Fellow (2014-2018)
Prof. Yuliang Jin
Postdoctoral Fellow (2012-2015)
Dr. Bijoy Daga
Postdoctoral fellow (2019-2022)
(Joint appointment with Bagnat Lab in Department of Cell Biology.)
Dr. Peter K. Morse
Postdoctoral fellow (2019-2022)
Dr. Giampaolo Folena
Postdoctoral fellow (2021-2023)
Ye Liang
MS student (M.Sc., 2019)
Zhen Yang
Undergraduate researcher (2019)
Caitlin Gish
Undergraduate researcher (2019)
Glenn Palmer
Research Associate (2017, Duke ’14)
Cathy Li
Research Associate (2016-2017, Duke ’16)
Daming Li
Undergraduate researcher (2015)
Hao Zhao
Undergraduate researcher (2014, Duke ’17)
Dr. Raffaele Tavarone
TU Berlin visitor (2014-2015)
Dr. Giulia Carra
ENS visitor (2013)
David Sandberg
MRSEC REU (2014)
Samuel Wentworth
MRSEC REU (2013)
Dr. Timothy Barnum
Chemistry REU (2012)
