Nicolas Romeo
Researcher in theoretical biophysics
I am a Biological Physics Fellow in the physics department at the University of Chicago. I have broad interests in soft, active and biological matter systems, and my work uses approaches drawing from geometry, statistical physics, elasticity theory and model inference methods. My favorite systems are ones where novel (or at least non-trivial!) physics is necessary to explain puzzling biological observations, with developmental systems capturing so far most of my attention.
I got my PhD in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I worked with Prof. Jörn Dunkel and defended in June 2023. Before my PhD, I completed my engineering and physics studies at Ecole polytechnique in France. There, I wrote my master thesis with Prof. Marin Soljacic at MIT on Incoherent Cathodoluminescence, the production of light in materials by incident high-energy electrons.
Contact
nromeo AT uchicago dot edu.
CV
See here for my full CV (March 2024)
Publications (*equal contribution) [Google Scholar]
5. Vortex line entanglement in active Beltrami flows, N. Romeo, J. Słomka, J. Dunkel, K. J. Burns, J. Fluid Mech. 2024 [article][arxiv]
4. Scaling behaviour and control of nuclear wrinkling, J. A. Jackson*, N. Romeo*, A. Mietke, K. J. Burns, J. F. Totz, A. C. Martin, J. Dunkel, J. Imran Alsous, Nature Physics 2023 [article][arxiv][Informal presentation at Physics Communities, coverage Flatiron Institute, selected for the cover]
3. A Framework for scintillation in nanophotonics, C. Roques-Carmes, N. Riveira, A. Ghorashi, S. E. Kooi, Y. Yang, Z. Lin, J. Beroz, A. Massuda, J. Sloan, N. Romeo, Y. Yu, J. D. Joannopoulos, I. Kaminer, S. G. Johnson, M. Soljacic, Science 2022 [article][Coverage in Science, MIT News]
2. Learning developmental mode dynamics from single-cell trajectories, N. Romeo,* A. D. Hastewell*, A. Mietke, J. Dunkel, eLife 2022 [full text]
1. Dynamics of hydraulic and contractile wave-mediated fluid transport during Drosophila oogenesis, J. Imran Alsous, N. Romeo*, J. A. Jackson*, F. M. Mason, J. Dunkel, A. C. Martin, PNAS 2021 [article][Coverage in MIT News]
Thesis
Geometry and transport in development, PhD Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2023
Code
Some of my code is available at https://github.com/NicoRomeo
The cover image is a montage of microscopy images of Drosophila nurse cell nuclei taken by my friend and collaborator Jonathan Jackson