Actively-driven #robots can produce a rich variety of emergent phenomena, including behaviors that appear counterintuitive at first. In a recent preprint from the Goldman Lab at @gtresearchnews.bsky.social, undulating robots form long-lived pairs mediated solely by repulsive interactions.

Excited to share our new work in @science.org #Robotics that shows how reversible kinks can help nematodes perform jumps 1000 times faster than you can blink! scim.ag/4iDIa1i 🧵: Work co-led by @chemicalsunnyraj.bsky.social , @itiwari93.bsky.social and Victor Ortega-Jimenez with many other colleagues

Check out these birds, courtesy of Nami Ha! Nami and the @bhamlalab.bsky.social at Georgia Tech studies the amazing materials that make up living things, including the ultrafast water absorption of sandgrouse feathers.

Today! Come see @sacrozhangt.bsky.social's talk!

Today! Please come see Dr. Shucong Li give an excellent talk!

Please join us this Thursday for the final PoLS Lunch & Learn of the semester! This week's speaker will be @sacrozhangt.bsky.social from the Hammer and @wcratcliff.bsky.social labs.

The @bhamlalab.bsky.social is looking to hire a new lab manager! See the flyer below for details!

Please join us today for another Lunch & Learn seminar! This week's speaker is Maryam Hejri from the Yunker Lab. Lunch will be served at 12:00, with a talk beginning at 12:30!

Animals at many length scales move through undulation. In a new paper, Chris Pierce and the Goldman Lab use the nematode 🪱 C. elegans to show how interactions with the environment cause undulating body movements to become desynchronized to the phase of muscle contractions.

Today! Come see Ben's talk!

This week's Lunch & Learn speaker is @doshna.bsky.social from the Sponberg Lab! Please come see his talk tomorrow!

Today! Join us for a PoLS seminar featuring Dr. Abdul Malmi-Kakkada, an Assistant Professor of Physics at Augusta University! Dr. Malmi-Kakkada is a computational biophysicist with expertise in cell-cell signaling and cell-substrate mechanical interactions. We will begin at 3:00 in Howey N201!

Please join us on April 15 for a PoLS seminar featuring Dr. Shucong Li! Dr. Li recently became an Assistant Professor at the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. She will be hosted by Dr. Zeb Rocklin.

PoLS faculty Dan Goldman has been named a lifetime fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of #Science (@aaas.org)! Congratulations to Dan, and also to the six other @gtresearchnews.bsky.social honorees named this year!

Today! Please come see Pablo's talk!

Can wriggling #worms inspire new principles in robot design? A new preprint from the @bhamlalab.bsky.social, in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and @sorbonne-universite.fr, describes how active filaments—like living worms—can efficiently gather tiny particles in confined spaces.

Lunch & Learn is back this week! Please join us this Thursday for a talk from @pbravo.bsky.social from the Yunker Lab!

Congratulations to the whole PoLS community on another successful @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Physics Summit! We look forward to seeing all of you again in Denver next year!

Just a reminder, PoLS folks—there will be no Lunch & Learn meeting today! We will see all of you again next week on the 27th!

I hope the PoLS community is enjoying the @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Summit! For those of you who signed up, please remember that we have a PoLS meetup dinner tonight at 6:00!

This year's @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Summit is well underway in lovely Anaheim, California! Our illustrious Dan Goldman was invited to give the opening talk at this morning's Robophysics session: A Decade of Robophysics at the APS March Meeting!

Today! Come see Aradhya's talk!

Please join us tomorrow for another PoLS Lunch & Learn! This week's speaker is Aradhya Rajanala from the Goldman Lab!

The application deadline for this wonderful (fully funded!) opportunity is this Saturday! Please apply now for a chance to study the amazing biodiversity of the #Amazon!

It's #Biomechanics Day at @zooatl.bsky.social! GT PoLS is always happy to reach out to the community. A big thanks to Tianyu Wang and all of the other students who helped make today happen!

How does the complex environment of #cell membranes affect transport into and out of the cell? PoLS Faculty JC Gumbart is out with a new collaboration, combining MD simulations with magic-angle spinning NMR to probe this challenging subject!

Today! Come see Evan's talk!

How do #cancer cells invade healthy tissues? PoLS faculty @shilabanerjee.bsky.social uses advanced simulations to study competition between healthy cells (green) and growing cancers (magenta).

Please join us this Thursday for another Lunch & Learn! This week's speaker is Evan Rheaume from the Fenton Lab. Please note that we're in the Interaction Zone on the first floor this week!

How do #fish navigate while swimming, and how does the underwater environment shape their locomotion? Come see Dr. James Liao at tomorrow's Faculty Search Seminar to find out! 🐟🌊

Applications are open for the Jungle Biomechanics Lab—a fully funded program at Finca Las Piedras in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, from August 3-17. Undergrads, grads, and postdocs should visit the @bhamlalab.bsky.social website for more information! bhamla.gatech.edu/project-blog...

Today! Come see Yaqing's talk!

The Harold Kim Lab studies #DNA molecules 🧬 far too small to be resolved with an optical microscope. Here, Tony Lemos uses atomic force #microscopy to image tiny DNA minicircles as they bind to individual proteins!

Please join us this Thursday for another Lunch & Learn seminar! This week's speaker is Yaqing Wang from the Sponberg Lab.

Flavio Fenton's CHAOS Lab maps the dynamics of action potential propagation in the #heart using fluorescent dyes. This is Braden Starver, a physics major at Morehouse. During an REU summer program with Dr. Fenton, Braden developed an affordable microcontroller device to initiate cardiac arrhythmia!

The Gumbart Group at Georgia Tech uses state-of-the-art MD simulations to study the function of #proteins. Here, we see a DOPC membrane lipid stuck in the opening of the mitochondrial Sam50 complex, unable to enter the beta barrel. Kudos to Gvantsa Gutishvili for the cool simulation!

When a cell divides, its centrosome splits in two—and cell division can go catastrophically wrong if the two centrosomes grow to different sizes. How does the cell regulate centrosome size? Deb Banerjee and @shilabanerjee.bsky.social present a novel model in a new @elife.bsky.social paper!

Come see Jeff Aguilar, Daniel Soto, and GT PoLS Professor Dan Goldman chat about geckos🦎, cockroaches🪳, and the physics of climbing up walls🧗‍♂️on the newest video from @veritasium.bsky.social! #physics #animals youtu.be/dFVrncgIvos

Today! Come see Aryaman's talk!

Our next PoLS speaker will be Aryaman Jha from the Wiesenfeld Group! Please join us this Thursday in Howey N201 to hear Aryaman's talk! Lunch will be served at noon, followed by the talk at 12:30.

An elephant's trunk is a marvel of nature—flexible enough for precise manipulation, yet strong enough to protect against predators. A recent collaboration between the Hu Lab, Joy Reidenberg, and Claire Higgins explores the unique structure of trunk skin 🐘🔬 #biology #elephant

Some bacteria use protein "pumps" to expel toxic substances from the cell, making them resistant to antibiotics. The Gumbart group recently collaborated with @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social and Helen Zgurskaya to show that Mg²⁺ plays a critical role in the function of these pumps 🦠🔬

Today! Please come hear Daehyun's talk!

Save the date! This year's iPoLS conference will be held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from July 28 to August 1. Registration information can be found here: emails.illinois.edu/newsletter/29/…

Please join us tomorrow for the next PoLS Lunch & Learn! This week's speaker is Daehyun Choi from the @bhamlalab.bsky.social. We hope to see you all in Howey N201, with lunch at 12:00 and the talk at 12:30!

The California Blackworm is capable of forming entangled blobs to escape predators—and when threatened, it can use a corkscrew-like swimming motion to speed away. How, then, do freshwater leeches manage to eat them? A recent paper from the @bhamlalab.bsky.social shows an unusual strategy! #biology

Check out this awesome explainer thread from @wcratcliff.bsky.social detailing his recent collaboration with the Yunker Lab!

How can subterranean organisms be observed as they move underground? A recent paper from Dan Goldman's CRAB Lab presents Laser Speckle Imaging (LSI) as a non-invasive way to view organisms as they move through granular media. #Physics #Biology doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Today! Come join us in the Interaction Zone to hear Lan's talk!

Thursday! Come see Lan Yang from the Gumbart Group speak at this week's Lunch & Learn. Note that we are in the Interaction Zone on the Howey first floor this week!