ROB CAMPBELL

My work combines topics from physics, mechanical engineering, materials science, and biology.

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Most recently I studied spider silk. I focused on the morphology of different spider silk glands to learn how changes in gland shape change the physics of silk assembly and influence silk structure and function. The goal was to improve fundamental understanding of materials science and evolutionary biology, and to inform bioinspired materials design.

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Along the way I also fabricated silk fibroin aerogels and gold-capped nanomushrooms, CT scanned zombie ants, collected spiders in Japan and Australia, prepared samples for silk mass spectroscopy, extracted spider RNA, and studied materials modeling and phylogenetics. 

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I'm interested in the places where physics, engineering, and biology intersect.