Also wanted to share this new preprint from the Marshall Lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social and his recently graduated PhD student Ulises Diaz, that I had a lot of fun collaborating on starting during my sabbatical there a few years ago.

Sol-gel Transition Drives Hyper-fast Mixing in a Giant Cell

The cytoplasm is a crowded and dynamic fluid within which cellular building blocks such as mRNA, proteins, or organelles undergo transport and mixing. Although small things like proteins can eventuall...

biorxiv.org

Last week was a good week for collaborative paper submissions that I have loved being a part of. Check out this bioRxiv preprint with the Labs of Nuris Figueroa and Frank Vernerey at CU Boulder on Stress induced mechanical memory in respiratory mucus. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Stress-Induced Mechanical Memory in Respiratory Mucus: Anisotropy, Network Reorganization, and Directional Transport

Mucus transport is essential for lung health, as ciliated cells constantly propel mucus outward to clear bacteria, viruses, and particles. This defense relies on a material that must be elastic enough...

biorxiv.org

It was so much fun co-chairing this workshop!! Plus #NITMB is a wonderful place to do and discuss science at the intersection of Biology & Math/Physics/Engr.

NSF-Simons NITMB@nitmb.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Discover research uncovering the physical properties of biological cells and tissues with AI and mathematics! @physbee.bsky.social is a Professor of Physics at @rittigers.bsky.social At NITMB, Professor Das was a Co-Organizer of the 'Expanding the Palette of Mathematics in Biology' workshop

This past week, @wallaceucsf.bsky.social and I co-organized "Expanding the Palette of Mathematics in Biology" workshop at the @nitmb.bsky.social -- an experiment in interdisciplinary Math + Bio engagement and ideation beyond traditional approaches. www.nitmb.org/expanding-pa...

Expanding the Palette of Mathematics in Biology

nitmb.org

I’m deeply honored and humbled to have been elected to the APS Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) Chair Line. DBIO has been my chosen family and professional home for many years, and I’m grateful and excited for the opportunity to serve our wonderfully thoughtful, vibrant community in this role!

Looking forward to hosting the awesome @haicenbiophy.bsky.social at this Friday's BPPB seminars for an exciting talk!! If you'd like to attend but don't have the zoom details, DM me.

BPPB Seminar Series@bppbseminar.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Please join BPPB Seminars on Friday Dec 12 at 11 am US Eastern Time for an exciting talk by Haicen Yue on How Scattered Active Players Shape the Jamming of the Crowd. For more information, and to sign up for our email list please visit sites.google.com/view/bppb-se...

Dear colleagues, if you are at the Cell Bio 2025, come check out posters by Sam Silliman (board B347) and Ulises Diaz (board B359)-- presenting work with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social and me -- in the Physical Properties of the Cytoplasm session in Exhibit Hall DE today from 2-3.45 pm.

Our manuscript on Dps:DNA condensates is now live on bioRxiv! With @abbondanzieri.bsky.social @meyerroc.bsky.social Check it out at: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Emergent Morphologies, Slow Dynamics, and Phase Behavior in Dps:DNA assemblies

The DNA-binding protein from starved cells (Dps) compacts bacterial DNA into stress-protective condensates, yet the physical mechanisms underlying this process and the material properties of the resul...

biorxiv.org

Super excited for today's BPPB seminar... happening now!

Markus Deserno@markusdeserno.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I am honored and excited to present our recent work on mixed AND asymmetric membranes at @bppbseminar.bsky.social! 🧪 My online talk will be this Friday, 11/21/25, 11am US Eastern time. Many thanks to the organizers for putting this together! More details here: sites.google.com/view/bppb-se...

It was such a pleasure hosting Anne Meyer from UR for today’s Physics Colloquium. Her talk was fantastic, and I learned so much. The Q&A that followed—including the many thoughtful questions from students —was great too. Anne and me chatting over ginger tea afterwards + the talk announcement

Dear biophysics friends — the APS DBIO elections are now open! If you are a member, check for an email from directvote.net with the ballot. Please take a moment to vote — our community thrives when we show up. Candidate statements and bios are on the ballot (and I’m on it for Vice Chair).

This weekend was peak fall at Letchworth State Park, and the weather couldn’t have been better on Sunday — perfect for our annual Lab (+ friends) hike.

Excited to be hosting the BPPB seminar tomorrow after a while (last semester I was teaching during seminar hour). Looking forward to a stimulating talk by Gautam Reddy (Princeton University) on the physics of learning. Hope to see some of you there

BPPB Seminar Series@bppbseminar.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Please join BPPB Seminars on Friday October 10 at 11 US Eastern time for an exciting talk by Gautam Reddy @gautamreddy.bsky.social 
on "Mechanisms for learning to learn in small transformer models". For more details, please visit sites.google.com/view/bppb-se...

Are you a mathematician or biologist interested in exploring the potential of mathematical biology? Join us for our upcoming workshop, Expanding the Palette of Mathematics in Biology! Application 🔗 in reply ⬇️

Last night we celebrated my postdoc mentee Jonathan’s send-off! 🎉 An amazing colleague and friend to our lab, his research in the Lab spanned cartilage mechanics, cytoskeletal composites & rigidity transitions, with papers in Science Advances, PNAS Nexus, Soft Matter, Phys Rev Res. We will miss him!

Just back from the 2025 Soft Matter GRC = soft matter summer camp. Talks, discussions & power hour were 🔥! Huge congrats and thanks to Jenny Ross & Meredith Betterton for co-chairing and making it a big success. In 2 yrs I’ll co-chair w/ Eric Dufresne — can't wait! Photo: with GRC and GRS chairs

Super excited about this new grant from the NSF–Simons NITMB with Wallace Marshall (UCSF)! Our project will use tools from abstract algebra and graph theory to model how mitochondrial networks form, reorganize, and function. #MathBio #Mitochondria #AbstractAlgebra #NITMB #InterdisciplinaryResearch

NSF-Simons NITMB@nitmb.bsky.social · last yr.

Representing mitochondrial dynamics with abstract algebra Explore new NITMB-Supported Research from Wallace Marshall (Professor, University of California, San Francisco) and Moumita Das (Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology)! Learn more at www.nitmb.org/supported-re...

Low key lab dinner last night to celebrate Keegan’s successful MS thesis defense and Youssof’s successuful PhD 2nd year presentation. Action shots from Youssof’s talk earlier in the day.

My Physics MS mentee Keegan Tonry defended their thesis today with a clear, thorough talk on spatiotemporal restructuring in active cytoskeletal composites. It’s been great to see them grow and thrive as a researcher and bring this work to fruition. Congrats, Keegan!

At the Hactive Matter 2025 Workshop (Hackathon) at UCSB, with my collaborators Rae Robertson-Anderson, Megan Valentine, Ryan McGorty and student/postdoc participants

Please join BPPB on Friday July 18 at 11 US Eastern time for talks by Lailai Zhu (Endowing Intelligence in Bionic Active Particles) and Sohan Kale (Mapping Cellular Tractions on Nanonets). For more information and to join our email list, please visit sites.google.com/view/bppb-se....

Just wrapped up 5 intense days at an NIH Innovation Lab on synthetic biology + cancer initiation. Hadn’t been in one in 4 years, forgot how stimulating they can be. Nothing like the thrill of bold, cross-disciplinary ideas with scientists you’ve just met—who may well become your new collaborators

I’ve recently stepped into the role of Director of our Physics PhD program. Colleagues who’ve served as PhD Program Directors or DGS — I’d love your thoughts on what worked, what didn’t, and what you wish you’d known starting out. Comment, email, or tell me next time we talk (in person or on Zoom).

I put together a rough presentation on how US science funding works, for my & neighboring research groups, mainly aimed at grad students. Lots of neat graphs! (Each could be a story of its own...) Quiz questions! I pasted it into a blog post: eighteenthelephant.com/2025/06/11/a...

An Informal Overview of US Science Funding

How does public funding for science work in the United States? How much money is there? Who gets it, and how? How much does a graduate student cost? Even normally, science funding is a rich topic w…

eighteenthelephant.com

Envious that colleagues at the TSRC workshop “Self-assembly in non-equilibrium systems” are hiking Bridal Veil Falls—but with my talk this afternoon, I stayed back to edit slides, + make a Broader Impacts highlight for NSF. I did hike Sunday, so just missing the “talking science while hiking” part!

End-of-semester Das Lab dinner tonight. I asked what we should toast to, and one of my mentees said, ‘To science.’ Couldn’t have picked a better one."

Had a great time speaking at @RITOsher about our work on cartilage shear mechanics and better models for insight into osteoarthritis. Packed room, lots of thoughtful questions, great conversations— thank you organizers and the NSF. Couldn't have done it #WithoutNSF. www.rit.edu/osher/events...

Some very happy lab news from this past week— Sam has accepted an offer to join the Physics PhD program at Princeton this fall, and Luke will be heading to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for a summer REU in Physics. I’m super proud of and excited for them both! 🎉🎆

Physics and AST spring semester picnic -- collective excitations at low T :)

Super happy for this new paper from a collaboration with Itai Cohen, Jim Sethna, and Bulbul Chakraborty that just came out in Soft Matter. The first author, William Wang, was an undergrad at Cornell (now CS PhD student at Stanford) when he did the work and an absolute joy to discuss and work with.

Rigidity transitions in anisotropic networks: a crossover scaling analysis

We study how the rigidity transition in a triangular lattice changes as a function of anisotropy by preferentially filling bonds on the lattice in one direction. We discover that the onset of rigidity...

pubs.rsc.org