Our interdisciplinary center includes physicists, chemists, biologists and food engineers joint together to approach basic and applied problems originally motivated by food and engineering applications. SMAT-C brings together the Biophysics, the Complex Material and the Thin Objects Laboratories of the Physics Department, the Packaging and the Physical Properties of Food Laboratories of the Technological Faculty and the Electrochemistry and Coating Film Laboratories of the Chemistry Department.

SMAT-C members are organized in seven groups led by principal investigators that have been selected to efficiently address the aforementioned research challenges. Each group is responsible of a research line, all lines converging into three main areas, namely, “Physics and Chemistry of thin objects, new methods and materials for food packaging”, ”Soft materials and food physical properties” and “Sensors, methods and novel instruments for soft matter assessment and applications”.

SMAT-C provides a privileged environment for human resources training, where food engineers benefit from highly technical expertise developed in experimental and in design engineering, while physicists, chemist and biologists find new sources of basic and applied challenging problems. Sophisticated and novel techniques motivated by our collaborative research as well as local opportunities are being exploited. Confocal microscopy, optical and magnetic tweezers, AFM, colloidal probes and single molecule spectroscopy are some of the laboratory techniques that are becoming routine in our Center.