Peter M Hoffmann

I am the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a professor of physics at Wayne State University in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I am also an adjunct professor of materials science in the College of Engineering.

My research interests are the area of nanomechanics, biophysics and atomic force microscopy.

I write books (or one book, so far…) and articles for the general public.

I am also one of the founders of the Wayne State Biomedical Physics program.

I have interests in science education and promoting undergraduate research.

I’m also on Twitter.

When I don’t do physics, I like writing, photography, travel and music – see Instagram.

News

• New paper submitted, December 2021, “Dynamics of water and ethanol in graphene oxide” available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.09235
• Elected Member of WSU Academy of Teachers, May 2021.
• Chair of the department of physics and astronomy as of April 2020.
• Neutron diffraction measurements of confined fluids at NIST, March 2020
• NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) proposal accepted to do Neutron diffraction measurements at NIST in March 2020.
• New graduate student joins group, Zachary Auner, will work on fluorescence + AFM
• Invited talk at AAPT meeting, Orlando Florida on “Physics for the Life Sciences”, January 2020
• New paper: “Live cell measurements of interaction forces and binding kinetics between Discoidin Domain Receptor DDR1 and collagen I with atomic force microscopy” published – a collaboration between Cancer biology, Physics and Mathematics, Biochimica at Biophysica Acta, November 2019
• Taking over as PI of $3Million NSF IUSE grant on STEM education, “WSU – Student Success Through Evidence-based Pedagogies (WSU-SSTEP)”, August 2019
• Neutron diffraction measurements of the dynamics of water and ethanol in graphene oxide layers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, August 2019
• New edition of “Quantitative Understanding of Biosystems” CRC Press, April 2019, published with me as co-author.
• Received Funding for 2019 Barber Summer Research Program with Profs. Rafi Fridman (Pathology) and Harini Sundararaghavan (Biomedical Engineering)
• Two new graduate students have joined the group: Gobin Acharya and Ramesh Tripathi, Fall 2018
• One month research stay at the Leibniz Institute for New Materials in Saarbrücken, Germany, November 2017
• Administrative leave and Sabbatical, 08/2017-07/2018 – working on publications and books
• NaCl-Dependent Ordering and Dynamic Mechanical Response in Nanoconfined Water, Langmuir, September 2016
• KEY ISSUES REVIEW: “How molecular motors extract order from chaos”, in Reports on Progress in Physics, February 2016
• The Noise None of Us Can Live Without, Nautilus Magazine, July 08, 2016
• Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology, Nautilus Magazine, May 12, 2016
• Physics Makes Aging Inevitable—A Response to Comments, Nautilus magazine, May 22, 2016
• NSF-IUSE grant funded; “WSU – Student Success Through Evidence-based Pedagogies (WSU-SSTEP)” aimed at transforming STEM education at WSU, September 2015, $3 Million
• Squeeze-out dynamics of nanoconfined water: A detailed nanomechanical study, published in Physical Review E, October 14, 2015
• Squeezing out the last 1 nanometer of water: A detailed nanomechanical study, available on ARXIV, August 2015
• Life’s Rachet reviewed in the Reports of the National Center for Science Education, May 2014
• NSF-WIDER grant funded to improve STEM education
• Life’s Ratchet “longlisted” for Royal Society Winton Prize, as one of best 12 science books of 2012.
• Capsule Review in “The Scientist” for Life’s Ratchet
• New review of Life’s Ratchet at SF City book review
• Life’s Ratchet on NBC News Blog.
• Life’s Ratchet listed as one of the TEN BEST BOOKS on Physics by Physics World, and reviewed by Richard Jones, author of “Soft Machines“.
• Life’s Ratchet in the “Huffington Post”
• Talk at Microsoft Research, November 19, 2012
• University of Washington event, November 19, 2012
• “Life’s Ratchet”, Popular science book on the physics of the molecular machines in your body published by Basic Books, October 30, 2012. Order here.
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• Revised paper published in Applied Physics Letters

• Paper on viscosity measurements in nanoconfined liquids posted on ARXIV.
• Received funding for a combined AFM/fluorescence microscope setup (PI) and a focused ion beam system (Co-PI) from the National Science Foundation