Angelo Cacciuto
Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Address:        Department of Materials Science and Engineering                         University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign                         1304 W. Green St.                         Urbana, IL 61801 Telephone:  217- 244 4259 Email:           cacciuto@uiuc.edu Education:   1992-1996     Laurea - Universita' degli Studi di Cagliari                         1997-2002     Ph.D.  - Syracuse University                           2002-2005     Research Associate - FOM Institute (Amolf, NL)                         2005-present  Research Associate -University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Research Interests 

My research interests cover areas of soft condensed matter that are common to physics, biology, chemistry and material science.
Over the years, I have worked on a large number of important problems ranging from the physics of biological membranes, I explored the mechanical and morphological properties of cytoskeletal networks (tethered membranes) and the physical mechanisms underlying the formation of tubular protrusions in lipid bilayers, to the physics of complex fluids, which includes rare and activated events such as homogeneous and heterogeneous crystal nucleation and colloidal functionalization and self-assembly. But I have also worked on the physics of disordered systems, on the problem of ordering and packing in spherical crystals, and more recently I directed my efforts to the problems of confinement driven translocation of neutral filaments and Janus nano-particles self assembly.

At present, I am a postdoctoral research associate in the group of Erik Luijten at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I am working on several aspects of the electrostatic interaction in polymers and colloids.

Here are some images taken from my work:

Seeded Crystal Nucleation Nature 428, 404 (2004)	Polymer Confined in a Spherical Cavity Nano Letters 6, 901 (2006)	Confinement Driven Polymer Translocation Phy. Rev. Lett. 96, 238104 (2006)
Self Assembly of Janus Particles Nano Letters 6,  2510 (2006)	Membrane Tube Formation Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 068101 (2005)	Grain Boundaries in Spherical Crystals Science 299, 1716 (2003)

List of Publications:

1. Clusters of Charged Janus Spheres
   Nano Letters 6 (11) 2510 (2006)
   Hong L., Cacciuto A., Luijten E. and Granick S.

2. Confinement-driven translocation of a flexible polymer
   Phy. Rev. Lett. 96 (23) 238104 (2006)
   Cacciuto A. and Luijten  L.
   (Selected by Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research)

3. Self-avoiding flexible polymers under spherical confinement
   Nano Letters 6 (5) 901 (2006) - (Cover paper of the issue)
   Cacciuto A. and Luijten E.

4. Crystalline particle packings on a sphere with long-range power-law potentials
   Phys. Rev. B 73 (2) 024115 (2006)
   Bowick M.J., Cacciuto A., Nelson D.R., et al.

5. Simulation of colloidal crystallization on finite structured templates
   Phys. Rev. E 72 (4) 041604 (2005)
   Cacciuto A. and Frenkel D.

6. Force barriers for membrane tube formation
   Phys. Rev. Lett. 94 (6) 068101 (2005)
   Koster G., Cacciuto A., Derenyi I., et al.
   (Selected by Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research)

7. Stresses inside critical nuclei
   J. Phys. Chem. B 109 (14):6587 (2005)
   Cacciuto A. and Frenkel D.

8. Breakdown of Classical Nucleation Theory near Isostructural Phase Transitions
   Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 166105 (2004)
   Cacciuto A., Auer S. and Frenkel D.
   (Selected by Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research)

9. Onset of heterogeneous crystal nucleation in colloidal suspensions
   Nature 428, (6981):404-406 MAR 25 2004
   Cacciuto A., Auer S. and Frenkel D.
   (Also featured in Nature 428, 374(2004))

10. Solid-liquid interfacial free energy of small colloidal hard-sphere crystals
    J. Chem. Phys. 119, 7467 (2003)
    Cacciuto A., Auer S., Frenkel D.

11. Grain Boundary Scars and Spherical Crystallography
    Science 299 (2003) 1716
    Bausch A.R., Bowick M.J., Cacciuto A., Dinsmore A.D., Hsu H.S., Nelson D.R., Nikolaides M.J., Travesset A., Weitz D.A.

12. Crystalline Order on a Sphere and the Generalized Thomson Problem
    Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 (2002) 185502 -- (Cover paper of the issue)
    Bowick M.J., Cacciuto A., Nelson D.R. and Travesset A.

13. The formation of vortex loops (strings) in continuous phase transitions,
    Phys. Rev. E 65 (2002) 026133
    Bowick M.J., Cacciuto A. and Travesset A.

14. Universal Negative Poisson Ratio of Self-avoiding Fixed Connectivity Membranes,
    Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 (2001) 148103
    Bowick M.J., Cacciuto A., Thorleifsson G. and Travesset A.
    (Selected by Nature 414 503 (2001) and by
    Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research)

15. Universality Classes of Self-avoiding Fixed-Connectivity Membranes,
    Eur. Phys. J. E 5 (2001) 149,
    Bowick M.J., Cacciuto A., Thorleifsson G. and Travesset A.

16. The renormalization group and its finite Lattice approximation,
    J. Stat. Phys  97, Nos 3/4 , 541 (1999)
    Cacciuto A., Gregory E.B. and Travesset A.

17. Ultrametric structure of finite dimensional Spin Glasses,
    Proceedings of the XIV Sitges Conference 10-14 June 1996
    Cacciuto A., Marinari E. and Parisi G.

18. Ultrametric structure of finite dimensional Spin Glasses,
    J. Phys. A 30 (9): L263 (1997)
    Cacciuto A., Marinari E. and Parisi G.