I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. Our general topic of interest is the multi-scale physics of morphogenesis. The main question that I am fascinated by is how cells in early embryos or certain tissues – systems that already contain extensively complex components, functions and interactions – are able to actually self-organize in a robust and repeatable fashion.
In order to resolve this question, an adequate description that takes into account all of the important parts of the system is needed first. To this end, I am combining a more coarse-grained, physics-based view of the biological system with new numerical methods to simulate it. Specifically, certain types of cell clusters can be well described as foams, and this simplification allows us to examine the importance of physical quantities for developmental processes, as well as pose further question about the interplay of physical and biological processes inside of the cells.
Furthermore, we work together with experimentalists to verify and refine our physical description. In exchange, this approach also allows us to probe the biological system and make predictions in ways which would otherwise be impossible.
