I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). I use a theoretical physics perspective to understand the fundamental physical principles that underlie complex living systems. My research is guided by the overarching question: how do living systems use physical phenomena to generate functional behaviours? To address this question, I combine physical models with the development of novel data-driven inference techniques in close collaboration with experimental collaborators. I currently focus on three key research areas across physical scales from tissues to cells down to the molecular level: Information-processing and self-organization in multi-cellular tissues, active motion of cells in complex environments, and the stochastic dynamics of chromosomal DNA loci. Please refer to the research tab for more details.
At IST Austria, I work with Edouard Hannezo and Gašper Tkačik. I am also a Fellow of the NOMIS Foundation and my research is supported by an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship. I did my PhD in the group of Chase Broedersz at the Arnold-Sommerfeld-Center for Theoretical Physics at the LMU Munich on the stochastic dynamics of migrating cells, for which I received the Gustav-Hertz-Prize of the German Physical Society and the Dissertation Award of the Munich University Association. During my PhD, I was an Add-on Fellow of the Joachim Herz Foundation and my work was supported by a DFG Fellowship within the Graduate School of Quantitative Biosciences Munich. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, which were supported by a scholarship from the German Studienstiftung. My master's thesis was about colloidal thermophoresis under the supervision of Erika Eiser and Daan Frenkel.
NEWS
16.11.2023 New preprint on dynamic signaling and cell fate patterning in neural tube organoids is on bioRxiv!
04.09.2023 Our review on learning dynamical models of single and collective cell migration is up on the ArXiv!
29.06.2023 Our paper on the stochastic dynamics of pairs of DNA loci and their transcriptional encounters was published in Science! Find it online here. This was a great collaboration with the lab of Thomas Gregor (Princeton / Pasteur Institute), with experiments led by Hongtao Chen and Lev Barinov.
24.03.2023 Our paper on curvature-induced velocity waves in rotating cell spheroids has been published in Nature Communications. Find it online here! This paper was spearheaded by Tom Brandstätter, and in collaboration with Ming Guo (MIT), Ricard Alert (Dresden) and Chase Broedersz (VU Amsterdam).