Silke Henkes is an associate professor of physics at Leiden University, Netherlands. Her research group focuses on the physics of active materials, or how a collection of independently moving agents work together collectively, with the agents spanning from particles in granular materials to cells in epithelial cell sheets. Prior to arriving at Leiden University in 2022, she held lecturer positions at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Bristol, both in the UK. In collaboration with Jen Schwarz, David Quint, and Yaouen Fily, she introduced frictional rigidity percolation, a new class of rigidity percolation for frictional granular packings in 2016. Since then, the researchers have continued to develop the theory along with experimentalist Karen Daniels and others.
