Though membranes have been studied on micron length scales for some time, much less is known about their behavior within the mesoscopic regime of 1-100 nanometers, which is arguably the most biologically important. My work focuses on the development of theories that bridge these length scales. The research has two main thrusts: I) modeling the effects of viscous dissipation observed in scattering experiments II) describing general types of elastic deformations.

I) Using a previously established hydrodynamic theory, I demonstrated that viscous dissipation within lipid bilayers must be taken into account when analyzing data from neutron spin echo (NSE) spectroscopy measurements. The effects of dissipation were determined across multiple length scales by means of a numerical procedure.

II) I developed a unified model for membrane elasticity that accounts for the effects of bending, compression, molecular orientation, and microscopic noise. By employing a geometric formalism, the theory even allows for a variable number of lipid molecules. The predictions of the model were found to be in excellent agreement with molecular simulations.