Happy to share our new paper on collective cell dynamics. Great work from Yuan Shen @ijmonod.bsky.social ! Dynamic heterogeneity and hidden fluidity in dense epithelial tissues | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The division Physics and Life of the French Physical Society (SFP) organizes its fourth annual meeting in Lyon, July 9th & 10th! Join us and register here: phys-life-2026.sciencesconf.org Abstract submission deadline: May 30th

🚨 How do mechanical forces shape a developing organ? Our new #ScienceAdvances @science.org study, led by the amazing @cvagenapantoula.bsky.social, reveals a Piezo1-driven hydraulic mechanism, where mechanical cues control cell volume to guide cardiac formation ❤️🐟 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Check out our Insight on the beautiful work by Clark et al. 🌱 How can stochastic giant-cell fate lead to non-random epidermal patterns? Cell fate, endoreduplication, and growth all matter. cup.org/3QYjVm0 @roederlab.bsky.social @pauformosa.bsky.social @matmajda.bsky.social

Now published. Congrats to Soham and all co-authors! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/.... @embl.org

A new twist on an old problem. Great paper.

Active materials could be used to make devices that spontaneously crawl over a difficult terrain—provided system-spanning networks are formed among the individual constituents of the system. Without the networks, microscopic activity remains local and the macroscopic response disappears.

How can we learn tissue mechanics directly from cell patterns and images? In our new preprint, we introduce VertAX, a differentiable vertex-model framework in JAX for simulating epithelia, inferring parameters, and designing target tissue behaviors. shorturl.at/PUzT0 1/5

🔥Just out in @science.org Magazine 🔥 Our work on the emergent behavior of active polar rods is now online! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌟 Even more exciting: the work is featured on the cover

Hot off the press 🚨 Epidemic spreading between regions is often modelled on a network 🕸️ But how do we describe this process properly? Here, we show how to build a linear transport operator at the network scale, by coarse-graining local advection-reaction-diffusion within edges. shorturl.at/0tAN8

Our paper is now out in Science! Super excited to share our discovery that #mitochondria #pearling is the elusive mechanism driving the regular distribution and inheritance of #mtDNA nucleoids 🧬 [1/6]

Static electricity has puzzled researchers for centuries. Nature reports on the experiments that are finally making sense of its unruly behaviours. (Just don’t shuffle your feet on the carpet while reading this) ⚛️ 🧪

I am excited to share my new paper in @plosbiology.org . Here we show the role of chitin, a polysaccharide, in controlling the shape of the fly corneal lens. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Aging may feel gradual… but what if it’s not? In our recent paper, we tracked fish continuously from puberty until death. This gave us a unique view of how aging unfolds across the adult lifespan. 🧵

I finally had some time to improve my poster about staging Drosophila embryos in collaboration with @stramerlab.bsky.social and we would like to share this with the community! You can find it here or at a higher resolution on my portfolio: www.behance.net/gallery/2458... #DrosophilaEmbryogenesis

This is why we love #CalciumSignaling Look how mechanical damage triggers long range Ca2+ waves in this plant !! By @annalisabellandi.bsky.social, who is now around here ;) Full www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @science.org #microscopy #cell #mechanobiology 🧪🔬

Our new paper is now out in PNAS: "The geometry of Nature’s stingers is universal due to stochastic mechanical wear." doi.org/10.1073/pnas... . Original artwork by John Sebastian

Squishy Science Sunday is back at the Global Physics Summit! Join us for hands-on activities about physics, including the physics of slime, sand, and cotton candy! Find us at Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Use code APSSQUISHY26 for a discount on general admission tickets!

Delighted this paper is out! Soft solids fracture in complex ways. Can we control it using structure and activity? Yes, using defects that localize energy injection for targeted failure! Amazing work combining exp, theory & ML by Sheng Chen and collab with Murrell lab (Yale).

Sometimes, the only way to build back up is to let everything fall apart. This is certainly true at the cellular level. www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

Great to see our paper on light-intensity dependent swimming patterns in #Chlamydomonas out now in Phys Rev Lett. as an Editors' suggestion! With a nice commentary by @philipcball.bsky.social. Chlamy actively modulate the beat planes of their #cilia! journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... #protistsonsky

Our latest with @torres-sanchez.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article-... Breaking isn’t always a bad thing! Think of birth, seed release... We highlight how living tissue not only tolerates fractures but actively fracture to grow, shape, reproduce, or adapt – across species and scales.

🚨 We are #hiring a PhD Student to study cerebellum-like circuits in #Drosophila. Please spread the word! www.groschner-lab.org/join #Neuroscience #PhD

Our article on multilayer inflatables has been published! A physics-computer graphics collab in which we introduce a new type of thin-sheet balloons and discuss their shape programming 🎈 @espciparispsl.bsky.social @pmmh-lab.bsky.social dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Excited to share my first PhD preprint! w/ Sören Kannegieser and @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social @insect-vision.bsky.social We investigated how hawkmoths coordinate lateralized sensory and motor control for appendage guidance, revealing similar control principles to vertebrates doi.org/10.64898/202...

The paper is finally out in JFM 🎉🎊: doi.org/10.1017/jfm.... Below is the thread summary of last year 👇

Really excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩 @poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

Super happy to share the exciting work of Emma Legait, showing how neighbourhood composition determines cancer stem cell fate in hierarchical tumours. A great and long-standing collaboration with @cedricmaurange.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

More about our latest collaborative work... “Architectural Swarms for responsive façades and creative expression” is now published in Science Robotics @science.org ! Read it here: science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.ady7233.

Job alert🚨I am advertising a 2-year postdoctoral position to work on the mathematics of plant morphogenesis @mpipz.bsky.social. Candidates with interests in mathematical modelling, mechanics, or biophysics are strongly encouraged to apply. 🌱Reposts are appreciated! jobs.mpipz.mpg.de/jobposting/4...

Our new paper (with @biotay.bsky.social) is out and on the cover story of @currentbiology.bsky.social !!!! Veronika, a Carinthian mountain cow flexibly uses a “multi-purpose tool” to scratch herself. A video and more information will follow in the comments. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Excited to share Alison's @alisonkickuth.bsky.social paper from the lab out in @nature.com this week! We uncovered how a mechanical ratchet mechanism drives cytokinesis in early #zebrafish embryos. Read more in this thread 🧵 and at www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩 @poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

The most recognisable feature of the human brain is its folds. So why do other animals’ brains look so different?

Check out our latest preprint on the cellular mechanical basis of Voronoi tessellations in epithelia! This biophysics study is inspired by disordered tessellations observed in zebrafish hearts 🤓🐟💙 #SulaimaanLim #ChiuFanLeeLab arxiv.org/html/2512.13...

Non-motile microbes are not prisoners of diffusive transport. Just their metabolic activity can be sufficient to stir up the ambient fluid and cause explosive long-range dispersal -- a "metabolic firework". Our latest work -- arxiv.org/abs/2512.16288

The study shows how individual fingerprint ridges deform when we touch different textures, revealing how subtle stretching and shifting along the ridge flanks may drive our remarkably fine tactile sensitivity. buff.ly/4z67Vf1

Nature research paper: Quantifying grain boundary deformation mechanisms in small-grained metals go.nature.com/48vtZcJ

As humanity pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the ocean absorbs about a quarter of it. This exchange happens largely through bubbles created by breaking waves. fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=26003

Researchers propose a method of manipulating small particles by using acoustic levitation and electrostatic charging, leveraging electrostatic repulsion and acoustic attraction to expand and collapse structures as needed. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/LKIK50XC71T

Where on earth is the best laboratory to demonstrate the beauty of fluid dynamics? Actually, it’s not on earth. Here is the story of the soft cell. And a longer read: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/74308

Active droplets are fundamental in cell biology and origin of life. With Jonathan Bauermann, @boekhovenlab.bsky.social, Frank Jülicher, and @m-pol.bsky.social, we show that a critical transition influences their size, morphology, ripening and division propensity journals.aps.org/prx/abstract...

Our work on hydrodynamic instabilities in active jets is on the cover of PRL this week! journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... A dialogue between experiment and theory, where we use light to control active suspensions and show how they can be destabilized by their self-generated flows

Coaxing tiny, self-propelled particles into cohesive structures provides one route to making micromachines. Taking a step in that direction, researchers have measured and analyzed the mechanical properties of materials assembled from active particles.

Excited to be at ICTS for the school on Geometry, Mechanics and the Physics of Growth, co-organized with Ganga Prasath (IITM) and @joelmarthelot.bsky.social (Aix-Marseille)! Fantastic start with a lecture on continuum elasticity by @abigailplummer.bsky.social (BU)

Really excited to present the results of a fantastic collaboration with Jesse Veenvliet @jesseveenvliet.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social 🤩 We find a unique mechanism for body axis elongation in mammals, different from other vertebrate species ➡️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Static electricity may be key to helping a tiny roundworm latch onto its insect hosts. Like a heat-seeking missile, the parasite zooms up to 10 millimeters in the air before getting yanked toward its target by nothing more than the electrostatic charge of its host. https://scim.ag/3WKFVjZ

Sharpen your knives! High-speed video analysis reveals that blunt knives and faster cutting speeds release more eye-irritating droplets from onions by building pressure under the onion’s skin before the ejection of the tear-inducing aerosols. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/5rc750Xcvhj

Appreciate Quanta for shining a light on our joint work with Simon Gsell, Sham Tlili (@shamtlili.bsky.social), and Matthias Merkel (@merkellab.bsky.social).

Did you know you can manipulate hundreds of microparticles using phototactic algae? This is what we show in our last preprint, led by T. Laroussi and J. Bouvard: arxiv.org/abs/2509.08133 🧵👇

🍀🔬 MSL10 is a high-sensitivity mechanosensor in the tactile sense of the Venus flytrap @natcomms.nature.com from Toyota lab. www.nature.com/articles/s41...