PhD candidate
Research group | Njord
Main supervisor | Luiza Angelutha
Co-supervisor | Anders Malthe-Sørenssen
Affiliation | Department of Physics, UiO
Contact | harishpj@fys.uio.no
Short bio
I am from India and my mother tongue is Marwadi. I did my bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore, India and my masters in Computational Modelling and Simulation from Dresden, Germany. During my masters, I worked on a field based multicell model that considers cells as deformable bodies. The cells in the model grow, divide, move, and interact with each other. The cells are circular in absence of interaction with other cells, and change their shape based on forces from other cells. I also worked on agent based modelling of evolution of cancer cells. Here, I explored the relations between the genotype, phenotype and the environment of the cell.
Research interests and hobbies
I am interested in helping to unravel some of the enigmatic secrets of life. I am open to explore all possible means of understanding life. In my free time, I like to do yoga, read, draw, cook, hike and play basketball. I am also excited to try out new hobbies for example, skiing.
CompSci project
Mesoscale modelling of turbulence and swarming behaviour in soft active matter
I will be studying active matter with the primary system being cellular monolayers. I will explore the role of topological and mechanical features in various cellular processes including division, morphogenesis, extrusion, migration, etc. I will also study active particles immersed in fluids for example bacteria. My approach would be an interplay between theory and
simulations.
Doctoral thesis
Collective emergent behaviour of active cellular systems
Using a mathematical model called the multi-phase field model, we study the collective emergent behavior of two-dimensional active, deformable cells. These cells move actively, i.e., they generate their motion by using energy themselves, in contrast to passive motion, which occurs due to the application of external forces. Here, emergence refers to atypical behavior that occurs only when cells interact collectively and is absent when cells are observed individually or in small quantities. This collective behavior of the cells is essential for understanding several key biological phenomena, including morphogenesis (the emergence of form and shape of organisms), cancer invasion, and wound healing. We find that cell deformation and neighbor exchange events between cells are relevant for stress release, cell mixing in tissues, and emergent cell shape symmetries.
Publications
CompSci publications
- Harish Pruthviraj Jain, Axel Voigt and Luiza Angheluta (2023) “Robust statistical properties of T1 transitions in a multi-phase field model of cell monolayers” Scientific Reports 13, 10096
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-37064-6 | Full text in Research Archive - Simon Syga, Harish Pruthviraj Jain, Marcus Krellner, Haralampos Hatzikirou and Andreas Deutsch (2024) “Evolution of phenotypic plasticity leads to tumor heterogeneity with implications for therapy” PLoS Computational Biology 20 (8) e1012003
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012003 | Full text in Research Archive - Harish Pruthviraj Jain, Axel Voigt and Luiza Angheluta (2024) “From cell intercalation to flow, the importance of T1 transitions” Physical Review Research 6, 033176
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.033176 | Full text in Research Archive
Previous publications
- Jain, H.P., Wenzel, D. & Voigt, A. (2021) ‘The impact of contact inhibition on collective cell migration and proliferation’, ArXiv:2108.04743.
