The spectre of Maxwell’s demon looms all around us, with sightings reported across diverse fields from economics, to evolutionary biology, to cellular sensing, to molecular biophysics. But how surprised should we be to find demons haunting the physical world?

Out today in @physrevresearch.bsky.social: "Information Thermodynamics of Cellular Ion Pumps", led by Julián Jiménez-Paz (@cornelluniversity.bsky.social), with @davidasivak.bsky.social (@sfuphysics.bsky.social)!

Last call for postdoctoral applications to join my group at University of Toronto. Feel free to reach out if you want to learn more about the position.

Postdoctoral Job Opportunity! I am hiring a postdoc to join my group next fall. Many possible research directions in theoretical biophysics and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. See the posting linked below for details — apply by Jan 15th for full consideration.

Excited to share two final preprints for the year: “Decomposing Non-Markovian History Dependence”, and “Tractable Model for Tunable Non-Markovian Dynamics”. Both with chriswlynn.bsky.social.

Johann du Buisson, Jannik Ehrich, mleighton.bsky.social, davidasivak.bsky.social, and John Bechhoefer introduce a one-coordinate test that infers heat flow to flag “demonic” operation. In kinesin simulations tuned to experiments, the motor grows more demon-like as active fluctuations rise.

Our recent work (elifesciences.org/articles/104...) combines theory and experiments (by Alex Papagiannakis and Christine Jacobs-Wagner) to understand how chromosome segregation is coupled to growth in E coli. We demonstrate that the nonequilibrium dynamics of polysomes may play a key role.

New preprint out today: “Information Thermodynamics of Cellular Ion Pumps”. Led by talented undergraduate student Julián Jiménez-Paz, and working with @davidasivak.bsky.social, we explore the thermodynamics of cellular ion pumps like the sodium-potassium pump. arxiv.org/abs/2506.11248

Canada Excellence Research Chairs offer $4-8M over eight years to build a world-class research focus.

Interested in coarse-graining, irreversibility, or neural activity in the hippocampus? If so, check out our new preprint exploring how maximizing the irreversibility preserved from microscopic dynamics leads to interpretable coarse-grained descriptions of biological systems!

Postdoc opportunity! Join us in heavenly Vancouver (Canada) to develop fundamental nonequilibrium stat mech, thermo, and info theory applied to biomolecular machines and in close collaboration with experiment. Details: www.sfu.ca/physics/siva...

Now out in @annualreviews.bsky.social of Physical Chemistry: @davidasivak.bsky.social and I review recent work studying flows of free energy into, out of, and within molecular machines. These nanoscale protein machines convert energy within cells of all living organisms with remarkable efficiencies.