In the spirit of Halloween, let me share with you a 'scary' piece of statistics. Many of you may have seen this image, which demonstrates the extreme scarcity of fresh water on Earth. That small droplet over Atlanta is our ENTIRE storage of fresh water. But, most of those are hard to get...

Happy to share that this work is now published in @biophysj.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1016/j.bp...

Cluster nanoarchitecture and structural diversity of PIEZO1 at rest and during activation in intact cells | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Apparently, these are the main (research) topics we are known for within my university :) Fun fact: if you google "Rutgers tension", we are among the top hits - only behind the 2023 Rutgers University strike...

I never truly appreciated the name Invitrogen until I came across a company called 'Invivogen'.

Mechanical Regulation And Activity of Nuclear Condensates: Biophysical Journal www.cell.com/biophysj/ful...

🚀The #BiomembraneDays2025 concluded WE THANK ALL PARTICIPANTS & OUR SPONSORS🙏🙏🙏 @abberior.rocks Critical Insights in Biophysics Ernst Rudolf Schloeßmann Foundation @dfg.de @jcellsci.bsky.social @lipotype.bsky.social @naniontech.bsky.social @picoquant.bsky.social Refeyn Ltd @biologists.bsky.social

Can’t believe Germany 🇩🇪 has an entire day off so that people can listen to the new Taylor Swift album 🎧🎶 😂 Any lab here open to hosting a visiting scientist next year? For someone who is interested in advanced microscopy and cellular mechanics (and can still do experiments 🙋)?

Look what I found in Berlin!

Something magical happened at #BiomembraneDays2025 today! The speaker (Tanmoy Ghosh) showed two papers in his slide, and it just happened that the authors of the two papers were sitting right next to each other among hundreds of people listening 😁. #BiomembraneDays25

Having a blast at #BiomembraneDays2025! Here is a fun little note: scientists profile pictures should always go with clearly labelled names… Well, unless it’s Albert Einstein.

Afternoon session of #BiomembraneDays2025 starts with Zheng Shi and a genuine fluorescent sensor for membrane tension.

We continue the #BiomembraneDays25 with Zheng Shi @zs-biophys.bsky.social who presented nice work on mechanosensors and membrane tension.

When you submit an abstract for #bps2026 you're not only sharing your work, you're: 🤝 connecting with your community ✍️ getting important feedback 📊 hearing the latest from your own and related fields 💻 learning about emerging technologies 🧑‍🏫 accessing career development workshops buff.ly/ckmwI4E

Vielen Dank an die tollen Organisatoren😉

Looking forward to the Biomembrane Days next week! I’m supposed to learn basic German but I ran into @markusdeserno.bsky.social at the airport. Now I’m wasting time on social media 😂 events.mpikg.mpg.de/event/15/

I am super excited to announce that we have a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics open in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon! 🧪 Interfolio link: apply.interfolio.com/174360 PLEASE, share widely across the blue skies! Let me briefly explain what we're looking for: 1/10

The last sentence summarizes my feeling to the question of "who exactly is a real chemist"... "Do you want to spend more time feeling like real inside members of a pure and defined club, or do you want to discover things?" Who Exactly is a "Real Chemist"? | Science www.science.org/content/blog...

Did you know that all nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are not the same? @luskinglab.bsky.social propose a new hypothesis for how nuclear mechanics may impact the compositional plasticity of NPCs with implications for tissue-specific diseases caused by NPC dysfunction. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share that my paper on Tau–Microtubule interactions is now published in Nature Physics!🎉 Our work shows that tau goes beyond stabilizing microtubules—it also promotes the removal of defects in the microtubule lattice. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks to the Cornell Chronicle for highlighting our work! news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

In small enclosed structures (like vesicles), the flickering of individual ion channels can have substantial effects on membrane voltage and internal ion concentrations. Mean-field conductance-based models break down. We studied what happens: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How often do you buy a book, then the author makes a series of free videos to help you read/understand the book?! Check out @longformmath.bsky.social 's Youtube videos (youtu.be/2QcJB-Yl7h8?...), On a related note, guess how many times the red and black lines cross with each other😉

Gave my departmental ‘tenure talk’ today, and here is the ‘highlight’ 🤗

Huan and I wrote a review on the rheology and interfacial properties of biomolecular condensates: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Hope it will be useful when you navigate through the large amount of relevant literature! Some of our key points are illustrated in the graphs below.

The Biochemistry Dept at the University of Washington has 2 open positions at the Asst/Assoc Prof level! Please apply and come be my colleague in Seattle! Great science, great students, great collaborations, and a lovely city

Now published! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Glad to contribute to this new study from Ben Schuster's lab! Check out how phosphorylation changes the membrane interaction of SARS-CoV-2 N protein condensates:

Check out this awesome story about the work of an awesome (former) undergrad in our lab @hollycheng.bsky.social who worked closely w @zs-biophys.bsky.social‬ Howard Stone, James Roggeveen & Huan Wang. bioengineering.princeton.edu/news/2025/st...

A mechano-resistance mechanism in skin adapts to terrestrial locomotion: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Reminds me of this recent article www.science.org/content/arti...

Interfacial effects determine nonequilibrium phase behaviors in chemically driven fluids www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Many thanks to Ishan and Vishva for writing this nice "News and Views" article on our collaboration with Jie Xu's group (@jie-xu.bsky.social )!

Over the past 6 months, I've been truly amazed by the level of service and dedication of NSF employees. Amid an impossible situation like, you know, a wrecking ball to science, another agency evicting you from your headquarters... THANK A PROGRAM OFFICER for their dedicated efforts amid the chaos.

Review: Accept immediately. With revisions, because we need figures!

Submitted a review two weeks late (for good reasons...); told by the system to check out the other reviewer comments; found the other reviewer comments not yet available🙂

Check it out at PNAS today. Thank you Alexandre for the collaboration!! PK Mem probes offer long time-lapse imaging of cell membrane dynamics. Made possible by Jing Ling, Yitong Liu, and all the collaborators! Available @spirochrome.com

Asked ChatGPT to add a face to a cell (microtubule labelled) we imaged:

Paired t-test 😂

Ordered family meal from Panda Express. Now enjoying these wisdom from lucky cookies 😂

Let me blow your mind further by pointing out that water striders can climb a meniscus by cleverly pulling and pushing on the water surface to locally bend it, and we can tell from the shadow (darker or lighter!) which way it is! Check out Supplementary Video 3 in this amazing paper by Hu & Bush!

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding. Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24. See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it. 🧵 1/3

Super excited to share that our new study is published @natneuro.nature.com today!! Here we show that intersectin and endophilin form condensates between the active zone and the reserve pool and maintain synaptic vesicles near the active zone for rapid replenishment. rdcu.be/evi5y

Thank you to everyone who made this happen🥺🥺🥺

Our recent collaboration with Ben Schuster's lab to characterize "protein surfactants"! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Just ordered something from Sigma 😲

Awesome paper alert! Learn about spectrum of chromatin condensate morphologies due to elastocapillary effects (no, liquids do not need to be spherical!), from amazing duo @dnamystrom.bsky.social & Hongbo Zhao, w/ important contributions from co-authors Jorine Eeftens, Mikko Haataja, Andrej Kosmrlj.

Had a blast at the Telluride lipids workshop. Here is a picture of me “trying” to impress @leventallab.bsky.social 😂

Check out this nice podcast, highlighting our recent work with Cliff Brangwynne @brangwynnelab.bsky.social and Howard Stone’s groups. Led by the amazing (not yet Dr.) Holly Cheng! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

Very glad and honored to contribute to this cool study. Check out the latest story on my favorite protein "NINJ1": www.nature.com/articles/s41...