An upcoming talk at the SciX Conference will explore the concept of electroosmosis, and how machine learning (ML) can be used to understand electroosmotic flow behavior.
At the SciX 2026 Conference, there will be an award session to recognize Siddhartha Das, a professor at the University of Maryland, for winning the AES Mid-Career Award. As part of the award plenary, Das will deliver a 30-minute talk on Wednesday October 7th at 8:30 am titled, “Electroosmosis in Soft Nanochannels Probed Using a Combination of Molecular Simulations and Machine Learning.”1,2
In his presentation, Das will discuss his group’s molecular simulation and
To understand why charged nanochannel walls are important to study, it’s important to know what an electric double layer is. This is an unbalanced layer of ions that charged nanochannel walls often attract.2 Under an applied or induced electric field, these mobile charges move and drag the surrounding fluid.2 This process is known as electroosmosis, and it is the subject of Das’s talk. The presentation will focus on the "soft" nanochannels, whose walls are grafted with charged polyelectrolyte chains, or brushes.2
In his presentation, Das will explain how his group used atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to study channels grafted with anionic poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) brushes and sodium counterions.2
There were three phenomena Das and his team noted. The first was the overscreening of the brush layer.2 The second was an excess of coions outside the brush that drives the flow.2 And the third was a reversal in flow direction when the electric field is increased.2
Das and his team also examined pressure-driven flow in PAA-grafted channels. There, the coion-driven electroosmotic transport is induced by the flow itself rather than by an applied field.2 What this produces is an "electroslippage" effect, in which electrokinetic energy is generated while the flow is enhanced.2
Das will highlight the two main findings from his team’s work. The first finding was that the team observed field-dependent flow reversal, which suggests the direction of transport could be tuned by adjusting the electric field.2 The second finding is the coupling of energy generation with flow enhancement in pressure-driven channels.2 The comparison between anionic poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and cationic [poly(2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl) trimethylammonium] (PMETA) brushes also shows how sensitively transport depends on the solvation behavior of the grafted groups.2
The AES Mid-Career Award is an annual award given out by the AES Electrophoresis Society. The award honors outstanding contributions to electrophoresis, microfluidics, and related fields by someone in the middle of their career.3
The AES Electrophoresis Society formed in the year 1972, and it has belonged to the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) since 2012.3 The society's mission is to advance and promote electric field-mediated separations, manipulations, and related phenomena, with a focus on electrophoresis and electrokinetic techniques.3
The AES Mid-Career Award is one of the several awards that will be given out at the SciX Conference. This year’s SciX Conference will take place in Sparks, Nevada. You can read more about the upcoming conference here:
