At the Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science for Sustainability, we bring together chemistry and physics to study the properties of materials at the nanometer scale. Our 5 research groups concentrate on three key research themes: Catalysts & Energy Materials, Colloids & Biomaterials and Nanophotonics & Quantum Materials.
The institute is named in honor of Peter Debye (1884-1966), a Dutch scientist and Nobel laureate who was a true pioneer in the field of physical chemistry and chemical physics.
Debye Annual Lecture 2026 speaker: Stefano Sacanna
The Debye Annual Lecture is a special annual event at which an internationally renowned scientist delivers a keynote lecture on one of the institute’s fields of interest.
Debye Annual Lecture speaker of 2026 is Stefano Sacanna, a full professor in the Department of Chemistry at the New York University.
Stefano Sacanna will deliver a series of four lectures between 10 September and 1 October 2026, taking place every Thursday from 16:00 to 17:00. The series will conclude with the Debye Annual Lecture on 15 October 2026.
- Lecture - 10-Sep, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Booth M 0.3 zaal + Mezzanine
- Lecture - 17-Sep, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Cosmos KBG
- Lecture - 24-Sep, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Atlas, KBG
- Lecture - 1-Oct, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Booth M 0.3 zaal + Mezzanine
- Annual Lecture - 15-Oct, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Booth M 0.3 zaal + Mezzanine
*Attendance to all lectures is mandatory for all Debye Institute PhD candidates.
Stefano Sacanna, Lectures Announcement (10-Sep to 15-Oct)
Stefano Sacanna will deliver a series of four lectures between 10 September and 1 October 2026, taking place every Thursday from 16:00 to 17:00. The series will conclude with the Debye Annual Lecture on 15 October 2026. Below you can find an overview of all lectures, including dates, times and locations, as well as abstracts and recommended pre-reading materials.
Mandatory for Debye Institute PhD candidates; BSc/MSc students and postdocs welcome.
What if you could redesign the atom? Give it a new shape, decide how it bonds, and then sit at a microscope and watch your matter assemble itself.
This course is about the branch of chemistry where that is daily practice. Colloids are particles large enough to see and small enough to never stop moving—atoms, in effect, that we get to design.
Over four lectures, I will show you what my group does with that license. We synthesize building blocks the way molecular chemists make molecules. We teach them to bond the way ions do, but softly enough that mistakes can heal themselves. We watch crystals form, layer by layer and defect by defect, and discover that the textbook picture of crystallization is often the exception rather than the rule. We steer growing crystals with salt or with light, changing what forms and where.
In the final lecture, we cross from structure to behavior: synthetic cells that eat on command, droplets that reshape themselves to swallow their surroundings, and matter that begins to harness the turbulence around it.
What I hope you take away is more than a collection of examples. It is a way of thinking about matter— as something you can compose. And the microscope makes sure you never have to take my word for it.
Stefano Sacanna
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How it runs. Four hours, each ~50 minutes of lecture plus real discussion. Basic colloid physics (hard spheres, DLVO, confocal imaging) is assumed.
Pre-reads (optional, one per lecture): Hueckel, Hocky & Sacanna, Nat. Rev. Mater. 6, 1053 (2021), with Hueckel et al., Nature 580, 487 (2020); Zang et al., Nat. Mater. 23, 1131 (2024); Zang et al., Nat. Commun. 16, 3645 (2025); Xu et al., Nature 597, 220 (2021), Fessler et al. Morphogenic colloids. Nat Commun (2026).
See you there. Bring questions.
PROGRAM
- Lecture - 10-Sep, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Booth M 0.3 zaal + Mezzanine (drinks after)
- Lecture - 17-Sep, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Cosmos KBG
- Lecture - 24-Sep, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Atlas, KBG
- Lecture - 1-Oct, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Booth M 0.3 zaal + Mezzanine
- Annual Lecture - 15-Oct, Thursday, 16:00 - 17:00, @Booth M 0.3 zaal + Mezzanine (drinks after)
Utrecht physicists create equilibrium glassy phase from rod-shaped particles
Glass appears to be a solid, but in theory it sometimes behaves more like an extremely slow liquid.
Physicists in Utrecht now show that glass-like structures can also exist in equilibrium, which is something many theories say should be impossible.
The bottom parts of medieval window panes, such as those in old cathedrals, are often thicker than the top. Has the material slowly flowed downward over the centuries, and does this mean that glass actually flows? This is a persistent myth, and the explanation lies in the way glass was produced in the Middle Ages. Because window panes were made by hand, their structure was often irregular and contained thinner and thicker parts. The panes were usually installed in the frame with the thicker side at the bottom, which made them more stable.
Still, the story touches on a real physics question. What glass actually is, a solid or a very slow liquid, turns out to be more difficult to answer than it seems. Researchers at Utrecht University have now created a glass-like state that is in thermodynamic equilibrium. According to common theories, such a state should not really be able to exist. “A glass and an equilibrium state exclude each other in many people’s minds,” says Thijs Besseling, first author of the study.