Ophelia Tsui

Presentation title: Tuning the effective viscosity of polymer films by chemical modifications

Ophelia K. C. Tsui obtained her B.Sc. degree in Physics from University of Hong Kong in 1988 and her Ph.D. degree in Physics from Princeton University in 1996.

After a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996 and later the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1997, Prof. Tsui joined the Department of Physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 1998. In 2006, she joined the Department of Physics at Boston University as an Associate Professor, and was promoted to be a full Professor in 2011. Since 2017, she has also been appointed a Professor of Physics in HKUST.

Prof. Tsui was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011. Currently, she is an advisory board member of Macromolecules and Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics. She is also the Chairman of the Council, the Physical Society of Hong Kong (2018-20). Prof. Tsui has co-edited three books in polymers, and co-organized several focused sessions on polymer interfaces and dynamics under confinement in major international conferences, such as the APS March Meeting and the Society of Rheology Annual Meeting.

Prof. Tsui’s research interests are primarily in experimental soft condensed matter, with a focus on the dynamics of polymers under nano-confinement. In collaboration with theorists and experimentalists of other disciplines, she also works on the crystallization kinetics of polymer surfaces, the nature of glass transition, and mechanics of cancer cells.