Nicolas Romeo

Researcher in theoretical biophysics

I am a Center for Living Systems 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 machine learning. I'm particularly interested in the emergence, organization, and robustness of biological function across space and time. Solving problems in the space between physics and biology requires physical model building and analysis, but also new inference and measurement methods to extract meaningful quantifications from experimental data: I contribute to both of these directions, often in collaboration with experimental colleagues.

I got my PhD in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Prof. Jörn Dunkel in June 2023. Before my PhD, I completed my physics and engineering studies at Ecole polytechnique in France. Back then I was very interested in quantum optics and wrote my master thesis as a visiting student at MIT with Prof. Marin Soljacic on Incoherent Cathodoluminescence, the production of light in materials by incident high-energy electrons.

Contact

nromeo AT uchicago dot edu.

See here for my full CV (March 2024)

Collaborators (past and present)

Publications (*equal contribution) [Google Scholar]

8. Information bounds the robustness of self-organized systems, N. Romeo, D. G. Martin, M. Scandolo, M. Fruchart, E. M. Munro, V. Vitelli, 2025 [arxiv]

7. Spatially-structured inflammatory response in the presence of a uniform stimulus, E. R .Jerison, N. Romeo, S. R. Quake, PNAS 2026 (in press) [bioRxiv]

6. Characterizing nonlinear dynamics by contrastive cartography, N. Romeo, C. Chi, A. R. Dinner, E. R. Jerison, PRX Life, 2025 [arxiv][article]

5. Vortex line entanglement in active Beltrami flows, N. Romeo, J. Słomka, J. Dunkel, K. J. Burns, J. Fluid Mech. 2024 [article][arxiv][Honorable mention, JFM Emerging Scholar Best Paper]

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

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