I had the great pleasure to host plenary speakers @micromotility.bsky.social and @jensen-research.bsky.social at the Finnish Physics Days 2026 @aalto.fi

New paper out in @commsphys.nature.com by Rafael Ayala Lara & Sharadhi Nagaraja et al. Forces and symmetry breaking of a living meso-swimmer doi.org/10.1038/s420... Funded by @erc.europa.eu & Research Council of Finland

Forces and symmetry breaking of a living meso-swimmer - Communications Physics

The physics of swimming at the mesoscale, where nonlinear and time-dependent fluid mechanics prevail, remains poorly understood. Here, the authors use a micropipette force sensor and deep neural netwo...

doi.org

The annual meeting of the Finnish Physical Society "Physics Days" will be held at Aalto University from March 4th to 6th, 2026. events.aalto.fi/en/3X3IKxA7/...

Had a fantastic time visiting DAMTP in Cambridge this week. What a stunning academic setting and beautiful old campus.

9th International Soft Matter Conference, Crete.

First day back on campus after my vacation. Did I tell you I have the best group?

New #JRSocInterface paper: Soft matter mechanics of immune cell aggregates. Read more: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #biomechanics @matildabackholm.bsky.social

📣 New paper alert: "Soft matter mechanics of immune cell aggregates" now out in J. Roy. Soc. Interface @royalsocietypublishing.org doi.org/10.1098/rsif... Project led by Shohreh Askari and Guillem Saldo Rubio in a wonderful, multidisciplinary collaboration with Prof. Fagerholm @helsinki.fi

📣 Open PhD and postdoc positions in my Living, Fluid, & Soft Matter group. These new researchers will work in my ERC StG project SWARM. Application deadline 3.8.2025. See links and details in the comments below.

This is such a cool new paper from the @bhamlalab.bsky.social with a fun discovery of kink instabilities in jumping nematodes. I was also happy to see that my old PhD data on C. Elegans bending stiffness was useful.

Bhamla Lab @ Georgia Tech@bhamlalab.bsky.social · last yr.

Using AFM, we discovered their cuticle is stiffer than C. elegans. That extra rigidity stores loads of energy in their body curvature when they bend into a shape that looks like the letter α, turning their bodies into tiny but mighty springs.

"Taken together, we can conclude that women — already dramatically underrepresented at the highest levels of physics — are further underrepresented in last authorship in prestigious journals." Excellent effort by Prof. Alannah Hallas.

Nature Physics@natphys.nature.com · last yr.

Today is an important day for us as a journal. We publish a Comment that analysis the gender of last authors of Nature Physics papers over the last decade ($): www.nature.com/articles/s41... Many thanks to Alannah Hallas for taking the time to collect the data and write the piece.

I really needed this. I will print this, have it on my desk, and re-read it a few times a year.

Jim Woodgett@jwoodgett.bsky.social · 2y ago

A long read from 2017 but well worth the time for any scientist who both loves their job and and often finds themselves questioning their life decisions. www.danielnettle.org.uk/wp-content/u...

Okay, here comes a newish PI question... We're soon submitting the first paper from my group (🥳). Should we upload it on arXiv? Any reasons not to? Something to be careful about? I've been really old-fashioned with this, but with the growing peer-review times, it might be time for change.

To introduce myself to this new community, I will share some of my previous research projects. In my postdoc with @robinras.bsky.social, I developed the micropipette force sensor to measure the tiny friction of water droplets moving on extremely slippery superhydrophobic surfaces. Details below.

I'm reading the wonderful book Beautiful Experiments by @philipcball.bsky.social: "Experiments are at the core of science. It is typically by experimentation that scientific discoveries are made." I couldn't agree more. Long live curiosity-driven experimentation with counterintuitive discoveries.

My Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University has opened two new Tenure Track positions in the field of Computational Physics, one of which is for the key area in soft materials: www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...

My current research keywords: soft matter physics, biomechanics, micro/meso-swimming, plant physics, capillary phenomena, force sensing, fluid dynamics, experimental physics

Help! What should I read next? Nothing too heavy, scary, or sad (life has given enough of that). What book blew you away or caught your full attention?