PhD Position: Control Capacity of Active Matter Using Activity Landscapes

id="offer-description" class="ecl-u-type-heading-2 ecl-u-mt-none ecl-u-mb-l">Offer Description About the Project . The Molecular Nanophotonics Group at Leipzig University, led by Prof. Dr. Frank Cichos, invites applications for a doctoral researcher position in a joint ISF-DFG project with the group of Prof. Dr. Yael Roichman at Tel Aviv University. Our group pioneered “photon nudging”, the feedback control of light-driven microswimmers, and has since combined it with reinforcement learning, physical reservoir computing and programmable hydrodynamics. Start Date: January 1, 2027 (or earliest possible date) . Research Focus: How many collective degrees of freedom of an active system can we actually control, and at what energetic cost? You will help to build a quantitative framework for controlling active matter with light, bridging stochastic thermodynamics and control theory. The project combines: . Self-thermophoretic Janus microswimmers driven by dynamic laser landscapes (Cichos group, Leipzig) . Light-powered bristle robots on a programmable LED arena (Roichman group, Tel Aviv University) . A shared theoretical framework built on fundamental thermodynamic limits . Comparing microswimmers with robots will reveal which limits of control are universal, from single particles to swarms, with applications from microswimmer transport to energy-efficient swarm robotics. What You Will Do . Design and run experiments with light-driven Janus microswimmers, shaping activity landscapes