Our manuscript discussing a direct link between active matter and sheared granular matter was just highlighted in a nice “News and Views” column in Nature Physics. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-021-01272-6

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Julia Giannini on her acceptance to the Cargese summer school on Glass Physics. Have fun, and let us know how it feels to travel again!

Our collaborative work of principal investigator (PI) Dr. Lisa Manning, co-PI Dr. Jeffrey Amack from our neighboring university SUNY Upstate Medical University, co-investigator Dr. Heidi Hehnly (Biology), and postdoctoral research associate Dr. Paula C. Sanematsu (Physics) is featured on EurekAlert! (link: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-01/su-sra010521.php).

Our paper, “Small-scale demixing in confluent biological tissues” just appeared in Soft Matter. Preeti Sahu,  Daniel M. Sussman,  Matthias Rübsam,  Aaron F. Mertz,  Valerie Horsley,  Eric R. Dufresne,  Carien M. Niessen,  M. Cristina Marchetti,  M. Lisa Manning  and  J. M. Schwarz Surface tension governed by differential adhesion can drive fluid particle mixtures to sort into separate…

Our paper, “Linear and nonlinear mechanical responses can be quite different in models for biological tissues” just appeared in Soft Matter. Preeti Sahu*,  Janice Kang*,  Gonca Erdemci-Tandogan and  M. Lisa Manning The fluidity of biological tissues – whether cells can change neighbors and rearrange – is important for their function. In traditional materials, researchers have used…

Work done by undergraduate SBI REU student Janice Kang and her graduate mentor Preeti Sahu on quantifying the nature of the rigidity transition in models for ordered biological tissues – ‘Non-linear analysis of the fluid-solid transition in a model for ordered biological tissues’ by Preeti Sahu, Janice Kang, Gonca Erdemci-Tandogan and M. Lisa Manning is now posted…

More than 30 educators from across the United States attended the inaugural “Building Authentic Partnerships” workshop on June 25-26, 2018. This workshop, held at UC-Irvine and sponsored by grants from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and NSF, was designed to inspire new and creative partnerships between minority-serving institutions and primarily white institutions. Organizers are…

Postdoctoral associate Daniel Sussman was selected as a finalist for the postdoctoral speaker award by the APS Group for Statistical and Nonlinear Physics (GSNP). He presented his work on anomalous interfacial tension in simple models of confluent cells in a special award session at the APS March Meeting in Los Angeles.

An article by postdoc Matthias Merkel and Lisa Manning was published in the New Journal of Physics as a Fast Track Communication. In this article, we develop a model for confluent 3D tissues and study a solid-fluid transition that is controlled by a minimal surface of 3D cellular packings.

Our article “Cell volume changes contribute to epithelial morphogenesis in zebrafish Kupffer’s vesicle” was published in the Journal eLife. This work results from our ongoing collaboration with the Jeff Amack lab (Upstate Medical, Syracuse) and involved group members Matthias Merkel, Jonathan Dawson, and Lisa Manning.