I am a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow in the Mathematics Department at Kyoto University, working with Prof. Kenta Ishimoto. I carried out my doctoral studies in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Prof. Eric Lauga FRS.
As an applied mathematician working at the interface of fluid mechanics and biology, I use analytical and computational methods to understand biological phenomena in terms of the physical principles which often underlie them. I am broadly interested in biological questions inside and outside the cell, ranging from organelle-scale and intracellular fluid flows, to cell locomotion at the single-cell and population levels. Simple models which reveal intuitive physical insight bring me much joy.
Recent research includes a phase autoencoder, rooted in Koopman theory, applied to noisy, periodic sperm beats and locomotion; and elastohydrodynamic instabilities in undulating flagella, which may provide a physical mechanism for superhelical waveforms, or double waves, found in spermatozoa across distantly related taxa and diverse flagellar architectures.
✉ htet.pyaehein.64m[at]st.kyoto-u.ac.jp Google Scholar ORCID
Pyae Hein Htet and Kenta Ishimoto (2026). [Preprint] Self-buckling of undulating flagella: an elastohydrodynamic mechanism for double waves in spermatozoa. bioRxiv.
Pyae Hein Htet and Kenta Ishimoto (2026). [Preprint] Data-driven geometric phase in biological locomotion. arXiv, arXiv:2606.22440.
Pyae Hein Htet and Eric Lauga (2026). Rotation reversal of chiral bacterial vortices. Soft Matter 22, 668–677.
Pyae Hein Htet and Eric Lauga (2025). Load-dependent resistive-force theory for helical filaments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 383, 20240260.
Pyae Hein Htet and Eric Lauga (2025). Analytical methods for cytoplasmic streaming in elongated cells. PNAS Nexus 4, pgaf057.
Pyae Hein Htet, Edward Avezov, and Eric Lauga (2024). Fluid mechanics of luminal transport in actively contracting endoplasmic reticulum. eLife 13, RP93518.
Pyae Hein Htet, Debasish Das, and Eric Lauga (2024). Hydrodynamic hovering of swimming bacteria above surfaces. Physical Review Research 6, L032070.
Pyae Hein Htet and Eric Lauga (2023). Cortex-driven cytoplasmic flows in elongated cells: fluid mechanics and application to nuclear transport in Drosophila embryos. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 20, 20230428.