What are the building blocks of biological systems? What are their properties and how are they organized? Researchers studying biomaterial properties and composition use methods from physics, chemistry, and biochemistry to understand the molecular composition and biophysical properties of biologically derived materials. Labs studying cellular structure and dynamics investigate how these molecular building blocks come together to create the inter and intracellular structures, how these structures are dynamically maintained, and what role they play in fundamental biological processes. Scientists studying mechanobiology seek to understand how mechanical forces are integrated into biological systems from single molecules to cells and tissues.
Properties, Structure, and Composition of Biological Systems
Featured Research
The biochemical and biophysical structure of ctenophore mesoglea
Sara Siwiecki ‘25
she/her
Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry (Sweeney Lab)
F-actin architecture governs self-organized criticality in the cytoskeleton
Zachary Gao Sun ‘25
he/him
Physics (Murrell Lab)
Understanding endothelial blood flow direction sensing
Shaka X ‘26
he/him
Biomedical Engineering (Schwartz Lab)
Faculty
-
Shirin Bahmanyar
Associate Professor; Molecular, Cellular & Developmental BiologyResearch Interests: Nuclear dynamics during cell division and organismal development, mechanisms that divide organelle structure, defining functions of inner nuclear membrane proteins in the organization of single cells and complex tissues -
Julien Berro
Associate Professor: Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and Cell BiologyResearch Interests: Actin and cytoskeleton; clatherin mediated endocytosis; mathematical modeling combined with experiment; imaging -
Caitlin Davis
Assistant Professor; ChemistryResearch Interests: Using time-resolved spectral imaging at multiple scales, from in vitro to single cell to whole organism, to make connections between molecular mechanisms and cellular function -
Enrique de la Cruz
Professor; Molecular Biophysics & BiochemistryResearch Interests: Molecular motors, cytoskeleton, polymer mechanics -
Allison Didychuk
Assistant Professor; Molecular Biophysics and BiochemistryResearch Interests: Herpesvirus transcription and viral genome packaging -
Rong Fan
Professor; Biomedical EngineeringResearch Interests: Combining single-cell analysis technology and systems biology to study cell-cell communication and cellular heterogeneity in human cancers and the immune system -
Paul Forscher
Professor; Molecular, Cellular & Developmental BiologyResearch Interests: Actin assembly; cytoskeletal protein dynamics; cellular motion; microscopy -
Scott Holley
Professor; Molecular, Cellular & Developmental BiologyResearch Interests: The systems biology, biomechanics and molecular biophysics of early spinal column development -
Valerie Horsley
Associate Professor: Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and DermatologyResearch Interests: Stem cells; wound healing; cellular mechanics -
Joe Howard
Professor; Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and PhysicsResearch Interests: Microtubules and molecular motors. Branching morphogenesis of neurons. Motility of cilia and flagella. Nerve nets. -
Jay Humphrey
Professor; Biomedical EngineeringResearch Interests: ascular mechanics; mechanobiology; design of tissue engineering constructs; computational modeling of vascular development, homeostasis, and disease -
Erdem Karatekin
Associate Professor; Cellular & Molecular Physiology and Molecular Biophysics & BiochemistryResearch Interests: Membrane fusion and fission mechanisms, Cell membrane dynamics, Membrane trafficking, Optical tweezers, imaging, Electrophysiology -
Megan King
Associate Professor; Cell Biology and Molecular, Cellular & Development BiologyResearch Interests: Nuclear mechanics; DNA repair; chromatin, nuclear envelope and cytoskeletal interconnectedness and structure -
Aaron Kuan
Assistant Professor; Neuroscience and Biomedical EngineeringResearch Interests: Electron microscopy and X-ray imaging techniques to enable 3D imaging of neuronal circuits combined with behavior and functional imaging to reveal how circuit connectivity underlies brain activity and cognition. -
Chenxiang Lin
Associate Professor; Cell Biology and Biomedical EngineeringResearch Interests: DNA nanotechnology enabled molecular tools and biomimetic systems -
Yimin Luo
Assistant Professor; Mechanical Engineering & Materials ScienceResearch Interests: Regulated cell alignment and tissue organization are vital in health and disease. To systematically investigate how cells respond to patterns, we achieve precise control over their arrangement through molecularly defined scaffolds. We innovate a continuous imaging platform tracking thousands of cells over days. Leveraging reams of data, we develop a hybrid procedure that utilizes statistical learning approaches to extend the state-of-the-art physics models. -
Michael Mak
Assistant Professor; Biomedical EngineeringResearch Interests: Multiscale mechanobiology in cancer and development, from molecular to multicellular levels, integrating microfluidics, wet-lab experiments, and computational approaches. -
Nikhil Malvankar
Associate Professor; Molecular Biophysics & BiochemistryResearch Interests: We are developing electronic Imaging & Control of Microbial Functions, by studying how environmentally and clinically important microbes build & use hair-like “nanowires” to export electrons outside their cell body, during respiration, communication, and pathogenesis and by tuning nanowire conductivity using light, pressure, temperature, electromagnetic fields, and non-natural ‘click’ chemistry. -
Simon Mochrie
Professor; Physics and Applied PhysicsResearch Interests: Quantitative microscopy and image analysis. Chromatin organization and dynamics. Nuclear envelope physics. Phase transitions of soft matter -
Binyam Mogessie
Assistant Professor; Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive SciencesResearch Interests: The Mogessie lab studies cytoskeletal organization and function with a special focus on chromosome segregation in mammalian eggs and the molecular origins of female reproductive aging and infertility. -
Corey O'Hern
Professor; Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, Physics, Applied Physics and Graduate Program in Computational Biology & BioinformaticsResearch Interests: Statistical mechanics of nonequilibrium systems; glass and jamming transitions in soft matter; computational biology; protein structure, interactions, and design. -
Anna Marie Pyle
Professor; Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and ChemistryResearch Interests: RNA remodeling enzymes; RNA tertiary structure; molecular virology; computational studies of RNA structure -
Hesper Rego
Associate Professor; Microbial PathogenesisResearch Interests: Imaging (including building microscopes), single-cell level experiments, mycobacterial infections, drivers of heterogeneity -
Xiaolei Su
Assistant Professor; Cell BiologyResearch Interests: Membranes, phase separation, and regulation of immune signaling; single molecule imaging and cell engineering -
Alison Sweeney
Associate Professor; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and PhysicsResearch Interests: Self-assembly and optical properties of molecular structures, biophysics, evolution of deep sea squid camouflage, combining theory with experiment -
Madhusudhan Venkadesan
Associate Professor; Mechanical Engineering & Materials ScienceResearch Interests: biomechanics and control of animal movement; muscle rheology and biophysics; inverse problems in elasticity and morphoelasticity. -
Min Wu
Associate Professor; Cell BiologyResearch Interests: Single cell oscillations and travelling waves, membrane curvature, mitosis, cell size -
Elsa Yan
Professor; ChemistryResearch Interests: Biomolecular interactions at interfaces; signal transduction across biomembranes; molecular mechanism of vision -
Jing Yan
Assistant Professor, Molecular, Cellular & Developmental BiologyResearch Interests: Imaging and modeling the developmental process of bacterial communities, characterizing and understanding the soft matter properties of bacterial biofilms, designing new bioinspired materials and surfaces -
Yongli Zhang
Professor; Cell BiologyResearch Interests: Folding and assembly of proteins involved in membrane fusion; chromatin remodelers and ATP dependent translocases; single-molecule biophysics; optical tweezers
