SLAAM Seminars

Fall 2025

Dec 1

Babak Vajdi Hokmabad (Princeton)
Metabolism, Motility, and Mechanics: Microbial Strategies in Complex Environments

[flyer]

Nov 17

Mehrana Nejad (Harvard)

Geometry and dynamics of living films: from active nematics to morphogenesis of algal blades

[flyer] [recording]

Nov 3

Amit Kumar (Weizmann)

Size and shape fluctuations of mesoscale domains in non-equilibrium liquid-liquid phase separation

Oct 20

Edmond Tingtao Zhou (Caltech)

Hydrodynamic interactions destroy motility-induced phase separations in active suspensions

[recording]

Oct 6

SJ Kole (University of Chicago)

Broken Symmetries and Activity: Odd Elasticity to Chiral Crystallites

[flyer]

Sep 8

Raymond Adkins (Yale)

Self-organization of the simple Cnidarian nervous system

[flyer] [recording]

Spring 2025

May 5

Cody Schimming (Johns Hopkins)

Dynamical Phases of Active Fluids in Complex Environments

[flyer] [recording]

April 7

Amelie Chardac (Brandeis)

Pattern formation in a 3D bio-inspired reaction-diffusion system

[flyer]

Mar 10

Jorge Luis Rosa-Raices (UC Berkeley)

Non-equilibrium flows and free energy estimation in active systems

[flyer] 

Feb 24

Mirna Kramar (Institut Curie)

Quantifying intracellular information flow 

[flyer]

Feb 10

Rahul Chajwa (Stanford)

Cellular Slingshots and Hidden Comet Tails in the Ocean

[flyer] [recording]

Jan 27

Yael Avni (U. Chicago)

Statistical Physics of Multicomponent Systems with Non-Reciprocal Interactions

[flyer]

Fall 2024

Nov 18

K.R. Prathyusha (Georgia Tech)

Collective Dynamics of Active Polymers: From Clusters to Tangles

[flyer] [recording]

Oct 21

Roman Belousov (EMBL)

Poissonian Cellular Potts Models

[flyer]

Oct 7

Sam Wilken (UCSB)
Phase-separated DNA liquids: spatial organization and reaction control
[flyer]

Sep 23

Emiliano Perez Ipiña (Johns Hopkins University)

Cells in Motion​: The Interplay between Motility, Migration, and the Environment​

[flyer] [recording]

Sep 9

Sadjad Arzash (Syracuse / Penn)

Epithelial Mechanics Through the Lens of Learning and Adaptation

[flyer] [recording]

Spring & Summer 2024 

May 20

Linnea Lemma (Princeton)
Driven protein fluxes control the number, size, and position of an essential phase-separated organelle in algae
[flyer]

Apr 15

Shreyas Gokhale (MIT)

Excitable nonreciprocal solids

[flyer]

Mar 18

Carmen Lee (NC State)
Relating the microscale to the macroscale in granular materials
[flyer] [recording]

Feb 12

Menachem "Nachi" Stern (UPenn)

Learning without neurons in physical systems

[flyer] [recording]

Fall 2023

Nov 13

Isabella Graf (Yale)
A bifurcation integrates information from many noisy ion channels and allows for milli-Kelvin thermal sensitivity in the snake pit organ
[flyer]

Oct 9

Mengqi Xu (UPenn, Perelman School of Medicine)

Myosin-1 facilitates symmetry breaking and the growth of actin comet tails

[flyer] 

Spring & Summer 2023

Aug 7

Biswarup Ash (Weizmann Institute)

Tunable three-dimensional architecture of nematic disclination lines

[flyer] [recording]

Jul 10

Abigail Plummer (Princeton)

Fracture, instability, and phase transitions via constrained expansion

[flyer] [recording]

Jun 12
Patrick McCall (TU Dresden and Max Planck Institute)
Contrasting phases: insights into the physical properties of biomolecular condensates
[flyer]

May 22

Pintu Patra (Heidelberg University)

The role of shape and mechanics in biological active matter

[flyer] [recording]

Apr 24

Fernando Caballero (UCSB)
Phase separation in active liquid crystal mixtures: bulk and interfacial dynamics
[flyer]

Apr 10

Mengfei He (Syracuse University)
Cross sections of doubly curved sheets as confined elastica
[flyer] [recording]

Mar 27

Miri Adler (Yale University)
Principles of cell circuits for tissue composition: Insights into the stability and vulnerability of our tissues
[flyer] [recording]

Feb 27

Raphael Sarfati (University of Colorado Boulder)

Physics of thinking matter: birds, bugs, sheep, and plenty of fireflies

[flyer] [recording]

Feb 13

Yongtian Luo (Johns Hopkins)
Modeling the Hydrodynamic and Mechanical Effects of Fluid-Storing Biological Flow Network
[flyer] [recording]

Jan 30

Andriy Goychuk (MIT)

Folding patterns in heterogeneous active polymers

[flyer] [recording]

Fall 2022

Dec 5

Varda Hagh (U Chicago)

Systematic manipulation of disorder for extraordinary functionality in materials

[flyer][recording] 

Nov 21
Yuqing Qiu (U Chicago)

Thermodynamic control of organization and self-assembly of cytoskeletal networks far away from equilibrium

[flyer] [recording]

Nov 7
Noah Mitchell (UCSB)

How biology uses physics to sculpt an inner organ

[flyer] [recording]

Oct 24
Miguel Ruiz-García (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Bioinspired flow networks: Excitability, self-sustained oscillations and a fluidic memristor

[flyer]

Oct 10

Yimin Luo (UCSB)

Programming structural transitions in soft matter: physics and data driven approaches

[flyer] [recording]

Sep 26
Guang Shi (UIUC)

Data-driven reconstruction of 3D genome from experimental data

[flyer] [recording]

Sep 12
Krishna Shrinivas (Harvard)
The Many Phases of a Cell
[flyer] [recording]

Summer 2022

Aug 29
Kalpana Mandal (Terasaki Institute)

Oxygen-releasing microparticles improve cardiomyocyte contractility under hypoxia

[flyer]

Aug 15 

Alexander Mietke (MIT) 

Odd dynamics of living chiral crystals

[flyer] [recording]

Aug 1
Chrisy Xiyu Du (Harvard University)

Magnetic Handshake Materials

[flyer] [recording]

July 18
Peter Foster (Brandeis University)

Active mechanics of sea star oocytes

[flyer]

Jun 20
Leroy Jia  (Flatiron Institute)

Membrane mechanics meet minimal manifolds

[flyer] [recording]

Jun 6 

Ido Levin (University of Washington)

New prospects in shape morphing sheets: unexplored pathways, 4D printing, and autonomous actuation

[flyer] [recording]

Spring 2022

May 23 

Vikrant Yadav (Yale University)

The Equation of State of a Tissue

[flyer] [recording]

May 9

Erin Teich (University of Pennsylvania)

Crystallinity characterization of white matter in the human brain

[flyer] [recording]

Apr 25 

Haicen Yue (Emory University)

Non-regular behavior during the coalescence of liquid-like cellular aggregates

[flyer] [recording]

Apr 11 

Eduardo Vitral (University of Nevada, Reno)

Better energies for low-dimensional elastic systems under combined bending and stretching

[flyer] [recording]

Apr 4 

Jonathan Michel (Rochester Institute of Technology)

Making a Mesh of Things: Using Network Models to Understand the Mechanics of Heterogeneous Tissues

[flyer] [recording]

Mar 28 

Eldad Afik (California Institute of Technology)

Intrinsic Rhythms in a Giant Single-Celled Organism and the Interplay with Time-Dependent Drive, Explored via Self-Organized Macroscopic Waves

[flyer] [recording]

Mar 7 

Anna Lappala (Harvard University) 

4D Chromosome Organization: Combining Polymer Physics, Knot Theory and High Performance Computing

[flyer] [recording]

Feb 28 

Caleb Wagner (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

Exact coherent structures and transition to turbulence in a confined active nematic

[flyer] [recording]

Jan 31 

Mike Norton (Rochester Institute of Technology)

Towards model-based control of active matter: active nematics and oscillator networks

[flyer] [recording]

Fall 2021

Dec 6

Weikang Wang (Pittsburgh)

Reconstruct cellular dynamics from single cell data

[flyer] [recording]

Nov 22

Navish Wadhwa (Harvard)

Mechano-adaptation in a large protein complex

[flyer] [recording]

Nov 8

Anton Peshkov (Rochester)

Metachronal waves in swarms of nematode Turbatrix aceti

[flyer] [recording]

Oct 25

Hannah Yevick (MIT)

Making connections: how epithelial tissues guarantee folding

[flyer] [recording]

Oct 11

Fabian Jan Schwarzendahl (Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf)

Mutation induced infection waves in diseases like COVID-19

[flyer] [recording]

Sep 27

Severine Atis (University of Chicago)

Growing in flows: from evolutionary dynamics to microbial jets

[flyer] [recording]

Sep 13

Ed Banigan (MIT)

How polymer-loop-extruding motors shape chromosomes

[flyer] [recording]

Aug 30

Zhihong You (UC Santa Barbara)

Theory of activity-powered interfaces

[flyer] [recording]

Summer 2021

May 24

Brian Chang (Clark University)

The life of a mucosalivary droplet: Lessons from synthetic breaths and sneezes 

[flyer] [recording]

Jun 7

Suraj Shankar (Harvard University)

Flocking through complex environments

[flyer] [recording]

Jun 21

Tapomoy Bhattacharjee (Princeton University)

3D Printing Cellular Communities: Mammalian Cells, Bacteria, And Beyond

[flyer] [recording]

Jul 19

Olga Shishkov (University of Colorado Boulder)

Internal structure of honey bee swarms for mechanical stability and division of labor

[flyer]

Aug 2

Sulimon Sattari (Hokkaido University)

Do leader cells drive collective behavior in Dictyostelium Discoideum amoeba colonies?

[flyer] [recording]

Aug 16

Mehdi Molaei (University of Chicago)

Flow singularities in soft materials: from thermal motion to active molecular stresses

[flyer] [recording]

Spring 2021

Feb 1

Katherine Copenhagen (Princeton University)

Topological defects promote layer formation in bacterial colonies

[flyer] [recording]

Feb 15

Salem Al Mosleh (Harvard University)

The finch beak: growth, form and function

[flyer] [recording]

Mar 1

Handuo Shi (Stanford University)

Chiral twisting in a bacterial cytoskeletal polymer affects filament size and orientation

[flyer] [recording]

Mar 29

Stewart Mallory (Caltech)

Phase Behavior and Self-Assembly of Active Colloids

[flyer] [recording]

Apr 12

Danilo B. Liarte (Cornell University)

Geometry, topology and soft matter: Emerging complex behavior of matter with disorder

[flyer] [recording]

Apr 26

Alexandra Tayar (UC Santa Barbara)

Liquid-liquid phase separation out of equilibrium

[flyer] [recording]

May 10

Ritu Raman (MIT)

Light-degradable hydrogels as dynamic triggers for implantable devices

[flyer] [recording]