Research Areas:
Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Physics

Prof. Daniel Ou-Yang received his PhD in physics from University of California at Los Angeles in 1985. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and Exxon Corporate Research Laboratory from 1985 to 1988. He joined Lehigh University as an assistant professor of physics in 1988, and became full professor in 2000. Currently, he is also Director of Lehigh’s Emulsion Polymers Institute. In 1999-2000, he worked as a visiting research scientist at the CNRS Laboratory for Dynamics of Complex Fluids in France.

Prof. Ou-Yang conducts research in experimental soft condensed matter physics that spans the topics of polymers, colloids and cellular biophysics. His research activities include the studies of ultrasound induced reorientation of gold nanodisks, polymer adsorption at colloidal surfaces, complexation of cyclodextrin with hydrophobic molecules in aqueous environment, structure and interactions of colloidal particles, active microrheology of polymer solutions and gels, quantitative study of electrophoresis and dielectrophoresis; in vitro cytoskeleton networks and biological cells at subcellular levels. To conduct experimental research, his laboratory develops novel capabilities of oscillatory optical tweezers and optical bottles and combines optical manipulation capabilities with advanced optical fluorescence imaging and spectroscopic techniques for understanding the interactions and dynamics of colloidal particles and biological materials at nano-meter scale.