Research Themes

Research Themes

There are currently three major themes that connect different aspects of our research activities. A large class of systems that we study exhibit non-equilibrium behaviour due to some form of Mechanical Activity, be it in the form of the beating of living or synthetic cilia, mechanical actuation of elastic media, or deformation of membranes. The interplay between non-equilibrium activity and Information Flow is an important characteristic feature in living systems, and we aim to integrate its understanding with the physical manifestations of the activity. Dense Active Matter is a natural description for many of the systems we study because the correlations at sufficiently high densities bring about possibilities for rich and complex behaviour. We study a wide range of systems with chemical and mechanical activity and sensing, and use their commonalties to build a comprehensive understanding about non-equilibrium physics of living matter.

We are interested in the collective phenomena of actively driven mechanical systems, such as magnetic colloidal particles and natural or artificial cilia. [more]
How do mechanics and chemical signalling relate to the function of an organism or physical system? [more]
Using nonequilibrium statistical and nonlinear physics, we investigate the emergent and collective properties associated with the self-organization of dense active systems. [more]
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