I am an artist, scientist, and designer. I use both experiments (things) and theory (ideas) to see, interpret, and reimagine our material world, often where the boundaries between hard and soft are less clear.
I recently completed my PhD at Princeton University, working in the groups of P.-T. Brun and Andrej Košmrlj. I am joining UC Santa Barbara as a Chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow in the fall of 2026, working with Ousmane Kodio and Mark Bowick.
Below are some current and past projects of varying scope, subject, and completeness. Recurring themes include entangled physical networks, pattern formation, viscoelasticity, materials with holes, wholes made from smaller pieces, things that may or may not have taken a long time to make, length scales where gravity can’t be ignored, phase change, mirrors, gardens, garments, the 1960s, and complexity. Thank you for visiting!
“Making the invisible visible”
News
- September 2026: I joined UC Santa Barbara as a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, working with Ousmane Kodio and Mark Bowick.
- August 2026: I defended my PhD at Princeton University!
- April 2026: visited Samara Ren and Jérémie Palacci during a trip to Vienna and gave a seminar on beaded metamaterials at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA).
- March 2026: presented new research on beads at the APS March Meeting.
- March 2026: visited the Kodio Lab at UC Santa Barbara.
- March 2026: finished making a pair of beaded pants.
- January 2026: participated in an ideation workshop at the University of San Diego hosted by Prof. Rae Robertson Anderson’s group supporting collaboration between two NSF grants, looking to connect our Future Manufacturing team with a DMREF team studying active composites.
- November 2025: visited fellow entangled materials enthusiast Tian (Tim) Chen at the University of Houston for a weekend of experimentation with volumetric weaving. I also met with several faculty members at UH (and Rice) and gave a research seminar. This visit coincided with the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics annual conference in Houston, where I joined a discussion on future directions for the Traveling Gallery of Fluid Motion.
- November 2025: works from our “Viscous Deluge” project will be shown at the Nicole Longnecker Gallery in Houston as part of this year’s installation of the Traveling Gallery of Fluid Motion.
- October 2025: presented a talk and poster at SES on Beaded Networks in Atlanta. I won a poster award: “Most innovative”!
- September 2025: I co-led a workshop on beaded metamaterials at the Studio for Creative inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (see photos). I also give a research talk there.
- September 2025: Invited panelist, STEM & Beyond: Charting an Interdisciplinary Journey (Princeton University), an event helping students explore pathways to pursue STEM while integrating the arts.
- May 2025: Interviewed about our “Spiral towers” in the Daily Princetonian.
- May 2025: “Spiral towers” photographs derived from my Liquid Lace research was included in this year’s Art of Science exhibition at Princeton, installed on campus for next year or so.
- April 2025: Viscous deluge project featured in the Princeton Engineering Magazine themed around “Art + Engineering”, in print and online.
- January 2025: I participated in a panel discussion on "Where Art Meets Science” hosted by the APS Joint Network for Informal Physics Education and Research (JNIPER). This was an amazing opportunity to ramble on about topics that matter a lot to me, in conversation with some very inspiring panelists, moderated by the incredible Nicole Sharp of FYFD:
- November 2024: “Haptic Lab” coursework with Prof. Joe Scanlan on reimagining a historic pre-cinematic device as a garment featured in the Princeton University Library news.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutt2AZkLsE
More information
CV- CV
- ldreier@princeton.edu
- Google scholar