Title of the talk: Interacting Active Matter: Beyond Two Dimensions
I will discuss mechanics of how cells use finger-like protrusions known to interact with their surrounding medium. First, I will present experimental and theoretical results of active mirror-symmetry breaking in subcellular skeleton of filopodia that allows for rotation, helicity, and buckling of these cellular fingers in a wide variety of cells ranging from epithelial, mesenchymal, cancerous and stem cells. I will then describe in-vivo experiments together with theoretical modeling showing how during frog embryo development specialized active cells interact with an active epithelium. In particular, I will discuss how specialized cells probe and modify an epithelial layer, and how they insert themselves and integrate within the epithelium. Finally, I will describe new computational results on the fluid-to-glass transition in 3D cell layers and apply it in the context of mechanical cell competition between normal and transformed cells.
Short bio: Amin Doostmohammadi is an Associate Professor of Physics at the Niels Bohr Institute. He obtained my BSc at University of Tehran, followed by Masters and PhD at University of Notre Dame in Mechanical Engineering. After that he moved to Theoretical Physics at Oxford, first as a postdoc and then as an independent research fellow of the Royal Commission. Since 2020 he started Active & Intelligent Matter Group at Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and have received several awards including villum young investigator award, Novo Nordisk NERD award, and ERC Starting Grant from European Union. He has also received the “major advances in biology” prize from French Academy of Science, Emerging Talent Award from IoP, and in 2021 received the young scientist medal and prize in biophysics from the International Union of Pure & Applied Physics (IUPAP).
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