BPPB seminars are held most Fridays. The first talk begins at 8 am pacific/ 9 am mountain/ 10 am central/ 11 am eastern in the US, which is 4 pm in the UK/ 5 pm in central Europe/ 8:30 pm in India/ 11 pm in Beijing. The second talk starts at half past the hour.
The goal of the series is to highlight interesting current research in biophysics, broadly defined.
Email list signup and talk zoom information: Click here to join the mailing list and/or volunteer to speak. Zoom information for each seminar will be shared with the mailing list on Wednesdays, and again in a reminder email on Fridays shortly before the talks begin.
Past talk videos: The BPPB YouTube channel has recordings of selected past talks.
Organizers: A rotating cast of organizers has helped to sustain this seminar series over the past few years. The current team is: Sonya Bahar, Jing Chen, Moumita Das, Andrej Košmrlj, Enkeleida Lushi, and Ashok Prasad.
Follow us on bluesky @bppbseminar.bsky.social
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Hawa Racine Thiam
TBA
Antun Skanata
TBA
Loïc Royer
TBA
Ilan Silva
TBA
Rizal Hariadi
TBA
Suliana Manley
TBA
Gautam Reddy
Tutorial & Talk
TBA
Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata
TBA
Amy Rowat
TBA
Julija Zavadlav
TBA
Ting Lu
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Lalit Deshmukh
TBA
Hammad Faizi
Active membrane deformations of a minimal synthetic cell
Ido Golding
Viral dormancy: Emerging principles & open questions
Image credit: Ido Golding
Shu Yang
Snapping of Liquid Crystal Elastomer Touch-me-not Knots for Diverse Motions
Philip Nelson
Tutorial
Pattern formation in an active fluid: Prologue to a story about morphogenesis
Alan Rodrigues
Using physical concepts to develop a 'post-molecular' understanding of organ patterning
Dagan Segal
Insights from zebrafish into cancer cell adaptation
Trevor GrandPre
Trait-space patterning is dictated by the tempo and mode of mutation
Lailai Zhu
Endowing Intelligence in Bionic Active Particles
Sohan Kale
Mapping Cellular Tractions on Nanonets
Dibyajyoti Mohanta
Heterogenous aging of RNA condensates
Emily Gehrels
How embryos generate polarized tissue flows during development
Rachel Bennett
Analytical framework for coordination of metachronal cilia
Krešimir Josić
The Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Growing Synthetic Microbial Consortia
Paul Atzberger
Drift-Diffusion Dynamics of Proteins within Heterogeneous Membranes with Non-Equilibrium Concentration and Temperature Gradients
Guang Yao
Modeling and validating the missing links in the circadian regulation of cellular dormancy
Justin Burton
Biology in the air: from hitchhiking microbes to jumping nematodes
Xiang Cheng
Locomotion of flagellated bacteria: the influence of complex fluids and aerotaxis
Yashashree Kulkarni
Statistical mechanics of active vesicles and implications for vesicle size distribution
Muhammed Simsek
Erk signalling dynamics required for segmented body plan of vertebrate embryos
C. Nadir Kaplan
Mechanobiology of mesenchymal cell migration: from holistic to reductionist modeling
David Hathcock
Mechanisms for dissipation-enhanced adaptation and cooperative sensing in bacterial chemotaxis
Shailaja Seetharaman
Mechanosensitive LIM domain protein FHL2 tunes endothelial function
Andrew Spakowitz
Talk & Tutorial
Modeling DNA methyltransferase function to predict epigenetic correlation patterns in healthy and cancer cells
Margaret Johnson
The right timing for self-assembly
Debraj Ghose
How do cells sense and respond to chemical gradients?
Ankit Agrawal
Inferring Cell-Cell Communication from Single-Cell Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics Data
Falko Schmidt
Dynamic 3D Optofluidic Control as a Multifunctional Platform for Microfluidic Applications
Lauren Altman
Holography and Effective Medium Theory Uncovers the Structure and Dynamics of Microscopic Media
Jingjie Hu
Transcatheter injectable embolic agent for minimally invasive vascular intervention
Clarice Aiello
Weak magnetic field effects in biology are measurable—accelerated Xenopus embryogenesis in the absence of the geomagnetic field
Boris Veytsman
Motion of Influenza A virus: The role of irreversibility
Jingyu Zhang
Long-range genomic loci stochastically assemble into combinatorial forms of chromosome skeleton
Amaresh Sahu
Geometry and dynamics of drawing tethers from flat lipid membranes
Julia Yeomans
Tutorial
Active nematic theories
of collective cell motility
Research Talk
Cell sorting and the
dynamics of cancer lesions
Karen Alim
Lessons from smart slime
Qin (Maggie) Qi
Modelling particle-membrane interactions for biomaterial designs
Tapomoy Bhattacharjee
Physical confinement selectively favours bacterial growth based on cell shape
Raffaella De Vita
The Vagina Dialogues: Breaking Taboos with Biomechanics
Emanuela Del Gado
Tutorial
Investigating structure, dynamics and topology in gels using computer simulations of microscopic models.
Research Talk
Soft particulate gels: timescales, rigidity, and their hidden hierarchical nature.
Sara Jabbari Farouji
Active polymers and filaments in static and dynamic heterogeneous media
Munehiro Asally
Microbial Electrophysiology: can electrically induced membrane potential dynamics be a sign of “livingness”?
Brian Camley
The physics of protein diffusion controls how cells respond to electric fields
Maciej Lisicki
Tutorial
Singular solutions of Stokes equations as elementary flow components
Research Talk
Tales of tails. Elastohydrodynamics of microscale filaments.
Robin Selinger
How are topological defects created? The Frank-Read source mechanism
Image visualization created by Cheng Long
Pierre Haas
Mechanics of poking cysts and folding tissues
Sarah Veatch
Protein prewetting at membranes is enhanced by the membrane phase transition
Zian Jia
Biological architected materials with extreme and unusual properties
Arnold Mathijssen
Tutorial
Holographic microscopy to track bacterial motility in 3D
Talk
Bacterial upstream swimming in complex fluids
Mehrana Nejad
Activity-induced interfacial pattern in bacterial droplet
Itay Budin
How phospholipids change their shape for life in the deep sea
Tine Curk
Collective effects in super-selective targeting of cell membranes
Zheng Shi
Aspirating Condensates in Living Cells
Luciana Bruno
The mechanical crosstalk between mitochondria and the cytoskeleton
Nuris Figueroa
Bacteria swimming in anisotropic media: Locomotion strategies in the face of physical constraints
Alfredo Sciortino
Microtubules as Maxwell's demons: active transport-based phase-separation of a binary motor mixture
Sahand Rahi
Gambling with your future: Why and how the DNA damage checkpoint does not play it safe
Eleonora Secchi
Formation Dynamics And Rheology of Bacterial Biofilms under Fluid Flow
Rumiana Dimova
Membrane remodeling in artificial cells: when a membrane meets a drop
Liselotte Jauffred
How motility and morphology accelerates expansion
Cristina Savin
Uncovering the neural dynamics underlying latent state inference
Yun Chen
Studying under-explored physical parameters in biology: viscosity and magnetism
Mattia Serra
Control of Modular Tissue Flows Shaping the Embryo in Avian Gastrulation
Piere Rodriguez-Aliaga
Dissecting the Structural Basis of Huntingtin Pathogenesis - one molecule at a time
Ewa Paluch
Tutorial and Talk:
Mechanics of cellular shape control
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Ian Wong
Topological data analysis of collective cell migration
Mengsen Zhang
Multistability and transitions – the connecting thread across neural-social systems
Shiladitya Banerjee
Dynamic Energy Allocation Theory
Alexander Mietke
Mechanics of asymmetric cell division
Aravind Rao Karanam
Eukaryotic Chemotaxis under Periodic Stimulus: Evidence for Temporal Gradient Sensing
Deepak Krishnamurthy
How Mechanics Encodes Behavior: Emergent Programmable Behavior and Chaos in Self-driven Active Filaments
Image credit: Rebecca Konte
Sho Takatori
Phase separation in 2D active networks
Yi Jiang
Collective cancer invasion with and without leaders
Jake Socha
The mechanics of snakes in flight
Maryam Kohram
Bacterial aging as a consequence of heterogeneity-driven adaptability
Raj Kumar Manna
Dynamical forces drive organ morphology changes during embryonic development
Margaret Byron
Flexibility and flow: deformable biopropulsors at intermediate Reynolds numbers
Mazi Jalaal
Light Production and Adaptive Morphodynamics in an Active Biological System
Karen Kasza
Stress management: dissecting how epithelial tissues flow and fold
Cynthia Reichhardt
Complex Dynamics in Active Matter Systems, Frustration Effects, Magnus Forces, and Machine Learning
David Zwicker
Physics of phase separation inside biological cells
Suckjoon Jun
Tutorial
Towards econophysiology: principles of cellular resource allocation in E. coli
Research Talk
Towards econophysiology: principles of cellular resource allocation beyond E. coli
Daniel Charlebois
Genetic networks, gene expression noise, and drug resistance evolution
Francisca Guzmán-Lastra
Active carpets in floating viscous films
Sara Walker
Assembly Theory
Eric Deeds
A lack of distinct cellular identities in scRNA-seq data: revisiting Waddington’s landscape
Sara Hashmi
Intermittency and clogging in complex fluid flows through confined geometries
Sunny Jung
Physics in spore dispersal
Katie Newhall
Different relative scalings between transient forces and thermal fluctuations tune regimes of chromatin organization
Hernan Garcia
Lighting up vertebrate segmentation
Abby Plummer
Obstructed swelling and fracture of hydrogels
Allen Liu
Building synthetic cells with a cytoskeleton
Dimitrios Vavylonis
Cell patterning for division and growth
Rastko Sknepnek
Cell-level modelling of active forces in early-stage embryo development
Paul Wiggins
When is too much not enough? Protein overabundance and the principles of central dogma regulation
Moumita Das
Circadian materialscape: Scheduled material self-assembly controlled by bacterial clock proteins
Natasha Mhatre
What moves (in) an insect ear: active auditory amplification in tree crickets
Sadjad Arzash
Rigidity of Epithelial Tissues as a Learning Problem
John Bechhoefer
TUTORIAL (Control Theory for (Bio)Physicists)
John Bechhoefer
Talk (Motors made with Maxwell demons)
Anne Staples
Bioinspired microfluidics: Lessons from insect respiratory mechanics
Daniel Matoz-Fernandez
Crafting Shapes: The Impact of Active Mechanics on Thin Sheet Structures
Mikhail Tikhonov
Emergent Simplicity in Microbial Ecosystems
Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin
Communication and collective behavior in animal societies
Takao Sasaki
Collective learning and coordination
Mimi Koehl
Tutorial
Locomoting in a turbulent environment: Ways to study microscale processes in a large-scale ocean
Mimi Koehl
Talk
How do microscopic larvae of bottom-dwelling marine animals recruit to suitable habitats in turbulent water flow?
Medha Pathak
Molecular Choreography of Piezo1 during Development and Repair
Julio Belmonte
Connectivity and Contraction in Cytoskeletal Networks
Matej Krajnc
Graph vertex model of cell aggregates
Bekele Gurmessa
The Interplay of F-Actin Stabilization and Crosslinking: A Microrheological Exploration
Ioana Ilie
From atoms to blobs: Multiscale simulations of amyloidogenic polypeptides
Aleksandra Nelson
Non-reciprocity permits edge states and strong localization in stochastic topological systems
Nenad Pavin
Exploring Tumor Karyotype Evolution Using the 'Macro-Karyotype’ Concept
Abhyudai Singh
Stochasticity in timing of intracellular events: A first-passage time approach
Daniel Needleman
Active Matter, Microtubules, and Cell Division
1. Saad Bhamla
The Blob: Topologically Entangled Living Matter
2. André Longtin
Entropy production and flow in humans under heat stress and exercise
1. Silke Henkes
Making the cornea spiral: Constructing quantitative simulations of epithelial cell sheets
2. Kayla Sprenger
Design of vaccine components and protocols for inducing protective antibodies against HIV
Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan
“Active” associative memory
1. Allyson Sgro
Understanding the emergence of microbial collective behaviors
2. Jürgen Kurths
Stability of power grid concerning tropical cyclones: Increasing resilience by protecting critical lines
1. Jing Chen
Sticking with two poles: Critical biophysical factors for rescuing mitotic spindle from monopolar and multipolar abnormalities
2. Zhiyue Lu
A Far-from-steady-state Theoretical Framework for Information Transduction via Stochastic Biosensors
1. Juan B. Gutiérrez
Collective Human Behavior
2. Abdul N. Malmi Kakkada
Collective Cell Migration Driven by Mechanical Coupling
Tutorial + Talk: Tim Atherton
Shape Sculpting and Shapeshifting with Soft Matter
1. Elio Abbondanzieri
A bridge too far: Bridging DNA contacts allow Dps from E. coli to condense DNA
2. Daniel Paranhos Zitterbart
Phase transitions in emperor penguin huddling behavior and its application in conservation biology
William Bialek
Finding evidence for scale invariance in animal behavior
Tao Zhang
Modeling collective interactions between spheroids and collagen fibers
1. Herve Turlier
From microscopy images to mechanical models of tissues and back
2. Daniel Cohen
Adventures in Cellular Herding—understanding and controlling collective cell migration
1. Guillaume Duclos
Microscopic interactions control a structural transition in active mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors
2. Zeb Rocklin
Modeling rigidity in tensegrity systems
1. Kate Jensen
Liverwort gemmae interact as capillary multipoles
2. Yaouen Fily
Evolution of Collective Swimming in the Mexican Cavefish
Tutorial: Label-free, two photon metabolic imaging
Talk: Disease detection and treatment monitoring via non-invasive, high resolution, optical metabolic imaging
1. Ben Rogers
The role of complexity in self-limited assembly of tubules from nanoscale building blocks
From molecules to development: Biological timing and patterning
Deep Learning for Imaging and Microscopy
Tuning Semiflexible Biopolymer Network Mechanics through Structurally Correlated Assembly
The Chromokinesin KLP-19 affects microtubule dynamics and shifts the force balance during mitosis
Unraveling Multiple Mechanisms of Long Non-Coding RNA Regulation through Transcriptional Stochasticity
Modeling and Inference to Understand Collective Stability of Epigenetic Marks
Inferring intracellular mechanics from active and passive measurements
The asymmetric torque-speed relationships provide a clutch for a bacterial flagellar motor.
Talking to Cells: Engineering Dynamic Cell-Material Interfaces to Guide Cell Fate
2. Jie Liang
Minimalist 3D Chromatin Polymer Models: Structure and Function of 3D Genome
Friday, March 3, 2023
1) Keisukei Ishihara, University of Pittsburgh
Topological control of organoid morphogenesis
Understanding non-Brownian diffusion in the cytoplasm of mammalian cells
2. Thomas Fai: Modeling the fluid dynamics of vesicle transport into dendritic spines
Tutorial: A Dynamical Paradigm for Molecular Cell Biology
Statistical dynamics of tumor initiation and progression
Dynamics of Viral Evolution and Mutation: a study of viruses in and around cells
Pankaj Mehta
2. Proteins in a crowd under heat and pressure
Margaret Cheung
Top-down functional-based approaches to modelling cell state transitions
Carla Mulas
to optimally network
Mechanical limitation of bacterial sliding motility with expanding cell chains
Jing Chen
Principles of structure/function in biomolecular condensates
Jeremy Schmit
Mechanisms and consequences of viscoelasticity in biomolecular condensates: some theoretical studies
Jie Lin
youtube channel Please visit our previous past seminars page to see the topics in biological physics covered so far in this series.
Past talk videos: Please visit the BP/PB youtube channel to find recordings of selected past talks.
Special thanks to Meredith Betterton, Kim Weirich, and Sri Iyer-Biswas and who were part of the original 2020 organizing team that launched this seminar series! Also thanks to Nuris Figueroa Morales on the 2021 organizing team!
Thanks to those who have live-tweeted the talks: Peter Foster; Brian Munsky; Guillermina Ramirez-San Juan; Brian Camley; Vivek Prakash; Kirsty Wan; Akanksha Thawani; Haneul Yoo; Olivia Leland; Arnold Mathijssen; Jasmine Nirody; Tapomoy Bhattacharjee; Dan Rokshar; Purushottam Dixit; Anna Bajur; Todd Gingrich; Wallace Marshall; Eric Dufresne; Maggie Johnson; Kinjal Dasbiswas; Ned Wingreen; Rana Ashkar; Manasa Kandula.
Guang Yao
TBA