Congratulations to postdoctoral associate Matthias Merkel for accepting a position as an independent junior group leader at the IBDM in Marseille, France.  We will miss you, but we’re so happy for your success!

Congratulations to undergraduate SBI REU student Janice Kang, who presented a poster in the University-wide Undergraduate Research Symposium in Aug 2018!  Also, a big congratulations to Preeti Sahu and Gonca Erdemci Tandogan who provided mentorship on your project to quantity the nature of the rigidity transition in models for ordered biological tissues.

Congratulations to Michael Czajkowski, who defended his Ph.D. thesis in Aug 2018. Best of luck in your new postdoctoral position in Zeb Rocklin’s group at Georgia Tech!

A paper by Michael Czajkowski, Dapeng Bi, lisa Manning, and Cristina Marchetti titled “Hydrodynamics of shape-driven rigidity transitions in motile tissues”, was published in the June 14, 2018 issue of Soft Matter. Full text of the paper is available at https://pubs.rsc.org.

A paper by Daniel Sussman, Mateo Paoluzzi, Cristina Marchetti, and Lisa Manning titled “Anomalous glassy dynamics in simple models of dense biological tissue” was published in the April 6, 2018 issue of EPL. Full text of the paper is available at http://iopscience.iop.org.

Lisa Manning was featured in a Q&A for Quanta Magazine on June 11, 2018. In it, she discusses how the study of dynamic glassy materials can help us better understand embryonic development and disease. Read the Q&A at www.quantamagazine.org.

Photo credit: Jennifer May for Quanta Magazine

Congratulations to Giuseppe Passucci, who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on April 18, 2018. Giuseppe’s thesis is titled “Self-propelled particle modeling, characterization, and imaging of superdiffusive fibroblast cells on 2D shape memory polymer substrates” and is available through the SU library at https://surface.syr.edu/etd/869/.

Lisa Manning, in collaboration with an organizing team of other Cottrell Scholars, will chair a 2-day workshop at UC-Irvine on June 25-26 called “Building Authentic Partnerships: Minority Serving Institutions and Primarily White Institutions Working Together to Improve Research and Education.” The objective of the workshop is to develop strategies and policies to help minority serving institutions (MSI) and primarily white institutions (PWI) develop authentic, sustainable partnerships that are mutually beneficial for faculty and students. Visit the workshop webpage for more information, including a full schedule and a list of speakers and facilitators. This workshop is funded by a grant from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement.

An article by Daniel Sussman, Jen Schwarz, Cristina Marchetti, and Lisa manning, “Soft yet Sharp Interfaces in a Vertex Model of Confluent Tissue,” was published in Physical Review Letters and selected as an Editors’ Suggestion. The paper discusses how topological features of simple models of confluent cells can lead to unusual interfacial behavior. Read and download the article from the PRL website, and see also a brief synopsis in Physics.