Brief Research Experience

 I am a theoretical soft matter physicist by training, and much of my work asks what can be learned from various biological phenomena. My research lies at the intersection of soft matter physics, biophysics, and statistical mechanics. During my doctoral work, I studied the statics and glass-like dynamics of confluent cell monolayers using analytical theory and computational models, including the cellular Potts, Vertex, and Voronoi models. I extended random first-order transition (RFOT) theory to describe glassy dynamics in confluent cellular systems and developed a mean-field theory of cell shape that connects the static properties of the tissue with the dynamics. Alongside my theoretical research, I gained experimental experience in immunofluorescence staining and confocal imaging of the Drosophila wing-disc epithelium, investigating how cellular shapes and orientations evolve during development. This experimental exposure provides valuable biological context for my theoretical work. In my postdoctoral research, I combine theory and simulations to investigate how variations in cell stiffness and activity influence the rheology and motion of normal, cancerous, and mixed tissues. This work provides a physical framework for understanding the transition from collective to individualistic cell motion during cancer progression, which is supported by experimental studies on co-culture of cancerous and non-cancerous cells.

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