Roster of Participants

Participant

Photo & Contact Information Research Interests

Vasyl Alba
vasyl.alba@northwestern.edu

I am a theorist. I would like to find a framework to describe complex systems in a simple way.


Institution: Northwestern University
Advisor: William Bialek

Meriem Bensouda Koraichi
meriem.bensouda-koraichi@espci.fr

I am a theorist. The goal of my project is to build a dynamical statistical biophysics and validate models in computational immunology and their components against time-dependent data in the presence and absence of a specific stimuli.


Institution: Ecole Normale Superieure
Advisor: Thierra Mora
Samuel Bryant
samuel.bryant@yale.edu

I am a theorist interested in bacterial chemotaxis and energy dissipation in non-equilibrium systems.


Institution: Yale University
Advisor: Benjamin Machta

Victor Chardès
v.chardes@gmail.com

I am a theorist. I am interested in immune repertoire optimal organisation under constraints from pathogen evolution as well as immune cells hypermutations. I am also interested in active matter related topics and especially non-equilibrium behaviors such as flocking and schooling.


Institution: Ecole Normale Superieure
Advisor: Aleksandra Walczak

Hanrong Chen
hr.chen18@gmail.com

I am a theorist. I am interested in statistical physics, evolutionary dynamics, and the adaptive immune systems of vertebrates and prokaryotes. I am also currently exploring mathematical models of reinforcement learning agents.


Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Advisor: Vijay Balasubramanian

Xiaowen Chen
xiaowenc@princeton.edu

I am a theorist. I am interested in using statistical mechanics to search for collective behavior in biological systems, currently investigating emergent phenomena in biological neural networks.


Institution: Princeton University
Advisor: William Bialek

Sang Hyun Choi
schoi109@illinois.edu

I am a theorist. I am studying how collective behavior emerges from social interactions in honeybee societies, by developing theoretical models to explain observations on thousands of barcoded honeybees in a hive.


Institution: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Advisor: Nigel Goldenfeld
Website

Wenping Cui
wenpingcui@gmail.com

I am a theorist. I am interested in using statistical physics to understand ecology and related complex systems.


Institution: Boston College
Advisor: Pankaj Mehta
Home Page

Luca Di Carlo
luca.dicarlo94@gmail.com

I am a theorist interested in statistical field theory applied to biological systems, disordered systems.


Institution: University Rome-La Sapienza
Advisor: Andrea Cavagna

Veronika Dubinkina
vd6@illinois.edu

I am a theorist. My research interests include computational biology, microbial ecology and evolution, genome structure and functions.


Institution: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Advisor: Sergi Maslov

Federica Ferretti
f.ferretti@uniroma1.it

I am theorist interested in modeling problems for active systems, especially related to collective behaviour and non-equilibrium statistical properties.


Institution: University Rome-La Sapienza
Advisor: Irene Giardina

Athos Fiori
athos.fiori@unibas.ch

I am a theorist. My research focuses in the function and evolution of the gene regulatory network although I like to chat about anything, from statistical physics to machine learning.


Institution: University of Basel
Advisor: Erik Van Nimwegen

Solange Flatt
solange.flatt@epfl.ch

I am a theorist. I am interested in the description of biological systems (e.g. proteins) using out of equilibrium statistical physics


Institution: Swiss Fed Inst Tech-Lausanne
Advisor: Paolo De Los Rios

Eliott Flaum
eflaum@stanford.edu

I am an experimentalist. I am interested in mechanics that lead to unique behaviors in both single cells and multicellular systems.


Institution: Stanford University
Advisor: Manu Prakash

Ezequiel Alejandro Galpern
eagalpern@gmail.com

I am a theorist interested in proteins at sequence level, thermodynamics, evolution, complex systems.


Institution: University of Buenos Aires
Advisor: Diego U. Ferreiro

Marco Garcia
mgarc165@ucr.edu

I am a theorist interested in viral and pathogen evolution and dynamics.


Institution: University of California, Riverside
Advisor: John Barton

Ireth Garcia Aguilar
garcia-aguilar@lorentz.leidenuniv.nl

I am a theorist and am interested in the theory and simulations of soft matter systems, focusing on mechanics, geometry and collectiveness in biologically inspired problems.


Institution: Leiden University / Sea
Advisor: Luca Giomi

Georgios Gounaris
gounaris@sas.upenn.edu

I am a theorist interested in distribution efficiency and structure of complex networks.


Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Advisor: Eleni Katifori

Simon Grosse-Holz
sgh256@mit.edu

I am a theorist. I study chromatin dynamics by means of statistical analysis of single particle tracking data.


Institution: MIT
Advisor: Lonid Mirny

Caroline Holmes
cholmes@princeton.edu

I am a theorist. I’ve worked on questions related to the role of neural spike timing, and am currently thinking about the importance (or lack thereof) of precision in building sensors in biology.


Institution: Princeton University
Advisor: William Bialek

Michael Hunter
michael.hunter26@hotmail.co.uk

I am an experimentalist. I am interested in the behavior and evolution of bacteria and phage in explicity spatial settings.


Institution: University of Cambridge
Advisor: Diana Fusco
Home Page

Giulio Isacchini
giulio.isacchini@ds.mpg.de

I am a theorist interested in statistical Physics Modeling and Information Processing in the Adaptive Immune System


Institution: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization
Advisor: Armita Nourmohammad

Hongda Jiang
jhongda@ucla.edu

I am a theorist interested in immunology, evolution, collective behaviors in cell-cell, cell-environment interaction, cytoskeleton forces.


Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Advisor: Shenshen Wang

Pranav Kantroo
pranav.kantroo@gmail.com

I am interested in understanding cell-type divergence using mathematical/theoretical methods. I am a theorist. 


Institution: Yale University
Advisor: Gunter Wagner and Benjamin Machta

Alexander Klug
klug@thp.uni-koeln.de

I am a theorist interested in recombination and mutational robustness in fitness landscapes


Institution: University of Cologne
Advisor: Joachim Krug

Isabella Kraemer
isabella.r.graf@physik.uni-muenchen.de

I am a theorist. I’m generally interested in better understanding the role of stochastic effects in biological systems and, more concretely, in transport and assembly processes.


Institution: Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
Advisor: Erwin Frey
Home Page

Elizabeth Lawson-Keister
elawsonk@syr.edu

I am a theorist. I am interested in theoretical work involving disordered systems, active matter and modeling the collective behavior of cells.


Institution: Syracuse University
Advisor: Lisa Manning

Hugo Le Roy
hugo.le-roy@u-psud.fr

I am a theorist interested infrustrated self assembly, soft glassy rheology, cell migration.


Institution: Ecole Normale Superieure
Advisor: Martin Lenz

Qihan Liu
qihan.liu@emory.edu

I am a theorist in quantitive evolution, specifically, investing how the adaption depends on the clonal interference and the spatial structure.


Institution: Emory University
Advisor: Daniel B. Weissman

Pancy Lwin
ptl1411@rit.edu

I am an applied mathematician working under a theorist. I am interested in modeling the fluid-structure interaction of a double network hydrogel. 


Institution: Rochester Institute of Technology
Advisor: Moumita Das

Nora Martin
nsm36@cam.ac.uk

I am a theorist. I am interested in using protein structure networks to analyse solved protein tertiary structures, and also in the properties of genotype-phenotype maps and their possible effects on evolutionary outcomes.


Institution: University of Cambridge
Advisor: Dr. Sebastian Ahnert
Home Page

Michael Martini
karl.michael.martini@emory.edu

I am a theorist interested in Using computational and analytic techniques from statistical physics to examine spatial patterns and dynamics in complex biological systems.


Institution: Emory University
Advisor: Nigel Goldenfeld
Website

Frea Mehta
f.mehta@lmu.de

I am an experimentalist. I am interested in force quantification across across the molecular motor machinery responsible for motility in apicomplexan parasites.


Institution: Ludwig Maximilians University
Advisor: Joachim Rädler; Markus Meissner

Matthew Metson
m.j.metson@sms.ed.ac.uk

I am a theorist interested in microscopic dynamics of run-and-tumble particles in two dimensions.


Institution: University of Edinburgh
Advisor: Richard Blythe

Jiseon Min
jiseonmin@g.harvard.edu

I am a theorist. I want to continue my research in mathematical modeling in cell biology and microbiology and learn more about population genetics.


Institution: Harvard University
Advisor: Ariel Amir

Adelaide Mohr
adelaide.mohr@epfl.ch

I am a theorist.I’m working on modelisation of enzyme selectivity using out of equilibrium statistical physics.


Institution: EPFL
Advisor: Paolo De Los Rios

Jacob Moran
jacob.t.moran@wustl.edu

I am a theorist interested in how statistical mechanics and topology can be used to uncover the fundamental principles that govern biological phenomena. My current research focus is on the evolution of microbial communities.


Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Advisor: Mikhail Tikhonov

Anjalika Nande
anande01@g.harvard.edu

I am a theorist interested in mathematical modeling of infections in the presence of immune responses and treatment.


Institution: Harvard University
Advisor: Martin Nowak

Avaneesh Narla
anarla@ucsd.edu

I am a theorist. I am interested in collective behavior (especially sensing), fluid mechanics, developmental biology and evolution.


Institution: Unviversity of California, San Diego
Advisor: Massimo Vergassola
Home Page

Liam O'Shaughnessy
l.g.oshaughnessy@vu.nl

I am a theorist. I am interested in using the tools of dynamical systems theory and information theory to investigate the fighting behavior of pairs of adult male zebrafish in 3D.


Institution: Vrije Universiteit
Advisor: Greg Stephens

Katherine Overman
keoverm@emory.edu

I am a theorist. I study animal behavior using various computational techniques.


Institution: Emory University
Advisor: Gordon Berman

Seong Ho Pahng
spahng@g.harvard.edu

I am a theorist. I am interested in studying network inference problems in biology and chemistry using statistical physics.


Institution: Harvard University
Advisor: Michael Brenner

Giulia Pisegna
giulia.pisegna@gmail.com

I am a theorist and I use tools of statistical mechanics and dynamic critical phenomena to study the property of collective behavior in biological systems.


Institution: University of Rome-La Sapienza
Advisor: Andrea Cavagna

Helena Christina Piuvezam de Albuquerque Bastos
hcpiuvezam@hotmail.com

I am a theorist. I am specially interested in learning Computational Neuroscience, Renormalizing networks and Animal Behavior.


Institution: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
Advisor: Mauro Copelli

Riccardo Ravasio
riccardo.ravasio@epfl.ch

I am a theorist interested in disordered systems, mechanical networks, protein mechanics, machine learning, allostery


Institution: Swiss Fed Inst Tech-Lausanne
Advisor: Matthieu Wyart

Nicola Rigolli
nrigolli@unice.fr

I am a theorist. I split between fluidynamics and decision processes: I am very interested in understanding how living entities can solve turbulence to obtein fundamental information for its life.


Institution: Universita Di Genoa
Advisor: Agnese Seminara, Nicodemo Magnoli

Ahmed Roman
ahmed.romman2000@gmail.com

I am a theorist. I am interested in phenomenological modeling of animal learning and behavior.


Institution: Emory University
Advisor: Ilya Nemenman

Maria Ruiz Ortega
mariru20@ucm.es

I am a theorist interested in quantitative Immunology.


Institution: Universidad Complutense
Advisor: Thierra Mora

Saloni Saxena
saloni_saxena@brown.edu

I am a theorist interested in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics


Institution: Brown University
Advisor: J. Michael Kosterliztz

Rabea Seyboldt
rabea.seyboldt@web.de

I am a theorist. I am interested in theoretical descriptions of complex systems, both inside cells, such as the combination of chemical reactions and phase-separation, and of many cells, such as in evolutionary and ecological processes.


Institution: Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems
Advisor: Frank Jülicher

Janaki Sheth
janaki.jrs@gmail.com

I am a theorist. I am broadly interested in auditory processing and neuroscience.


Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Advisor: Dolores Bozovic, Alex Levine
Website

Jordan Shivers
shivers@rice.edu

I am a theorist. I am interested in the mechanics of semiflexible biopolymer networks.


Institution: Rice University
Advisor: Fred MacKintosh

Natanael Spisak
natanael.spisak@gmail.com

I am a theorist interested in evolutionary dynamics of the adaptive immune response.


Institution: Ecole Normale Superieure
Advisor: Aleksandra Walczak and Thierry Mora

Julia Steinberg
jsteinberg@g.harvard.edu

I am a theorist interested in using and developing tools from statistical physics to understand the formation, organization, and dynamics of complex biological systems, in particular neural networks.


Institution: Harvard University
Advisor: Subir Sachdev

Lakshmipriya Swaminathan
lakshmipriya.swaminathan@oist.jp

I am a theorist. My research intrests, mainly include dynamical systems theory, it’s application in studying complex biological systems, and neurophysics.


Institution: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST)
Advisor: Not decided

Lorenzo Talamanca
lorenzo.talamanca@epfl.ch

I am a theorist interested in biophysics, chronobiology, statistical mechanics, spin systems


Institution: EPFL
Advisor: Felix Naef

Debora Tenenbaum
deboraten@brandeis.edu

I am an experimentalist. I’m interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying gene expression.


Institution: Brandeis University
Advisor: Jeff Gelles & Jane Kondev

Carolina Trenado
ctrenado@ing.uc3m.es

I am a theorist. I am interested in learning different skills related to biophysics. I am currently working in mathematical models in order to simulate epithelial monolayers and wound healing.


Institution: Carlos III University of Madrid
Advisor: Luis Bonilla

Rocio Vega Martinez
rvega@ing.uc3m.es

I am a theorist. I am interested in the cellular dynamics of the blood vessels growth. In particular, the relevance of cellular signaling processes, cellular mechanics and fluids in the blood vessel development.


Institution: Carlos III University of Madrid
Advisor: Luis L. Bonilla and Manuel Carretero

Michael Vennettilli
mvennett@purdue.edu

I am a theorist. My research is focused on the role of cell-to-cell communication in sensing and responding to noisy signals.


Institution: Purdue University
Advisor: Dr. Andrew Mugler

Michael Wang
mw3189@nyu.edu

I am a theorist. I am interested in probing the difference in behaviors between passive and active out-of-equilibrium particles through simple solvable models.


Institution: New York University (NYU)
Advisor: Alexander Grosberg

Jiacheng Xu
jchxu@ucdavis.edu

I am a theorist interested in memory storage, working memory, consciousness


Institution: University of California, Davis
Advisor: Daniel Cox

Grace Zhang
ghzhang@g.harvard.edu

I am a theorist interested in soft materials and biological networks.


Institution: Harvard University
Advisor: David R. Nelson

Lecturer

Photo & Contact Information Research Interests

Gordon Berman
gordon.berman@emory.edu

I am a theorist. I study the physical principles of animal behavior and its underlying dynamics, physiology, and evolution.


Institution: Emory University
Home Page

William Bialek
wbialek@Princeton.EDU

I am a theorist, and am interested in a wide range of problems at the interface of physics and biology.  There are two major themes: the approach of biological systems to fundamental physical limits as they collect and process information, and the emergence of collective behaviors from large numbers of interacting elements.  I have followed these themes, often through very close interactions with experimentalists, through systems ranging from single enzyme molecules to mammalian brains, and from genetic networks in the fly embryo to flocks of birds.  Most generally, I am interested in finding theoretical principles that have the power and generality that we have come to expect in physics, yet encompass the complexity and diversity of life’s most beautiful phenomena.


Institution: Princeton University
Home Page

Michael Desai
mdesai@oeb.harvard.edu

I am an experimentalist. I do theoretical work on evolutionary dynamics and population genetics as well as experimental work on evolution (primarily in budding yeast). 


Institution: Harvard University
Home Page

Eleni Katifori
katifori@sas.upenn.edu

I am a theorist, interested in a variety of problems in soft matter, biological physics and complex systems. My research currently focuses on biological transport networks.


Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Home Page

Mimi Koehl
cnidaria@berkeley.edu

I am an experimentalist. I study the physics of how organisms interact with each other and their environments. My goal is to elucidate basic physical rules that can be applied to different kinds of organisms about how body structure affects mechanical function in nature.


Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Home Page

Lisa Manning
memanning@gmail.com

I am a theorist. Research in the Manning group focuses on collective behavior in biological tissues and deformation in disordered solids.


Institution: Syracuse University
Home Page

Leonid Mirny
leonid@mit.edu

I am a theorist interested in Biophysics of chromosomes; polymer physics; statistical mechanics. Cancer genomics; Population genetics.


Institution: MIT
Website

Andrew Mugler
amugler@purdue.edu

I am a theorist. My research investigates cell-cell communication and collective behavior using theoretical and computational tools from physics.


Institution: Purdue University
Home Page

Armita Nourmohammad
armita@uw.edu

I am a theorist. We work at the interface of statistical physics and biology. We focus on topics from non-equilibrium statistical physics to evolutionary biology and immune system. The topics that we are currently investigating include (i) the role of Darwinian evolution in shaping the adaptive immune response against evolving pathogens, (ii) emergence of memory strategies in the immune system and (iii) optimal control of evolving pathogens with targeted interventions. To address these questions we combine toy models to build intuition about the system with data-driven approaches to learn the details of biology and test hypotheses.


Institution: University of Washington
Website

Stephanie E. Palmer
sepalmer@uchicago.edu

I am a theorist. I study how populations of neurons collectively encode information present in their inputs and how they perform computations on these signals. The brain performs several classes of computation including signal comparison, prediction, error correction, and learning. To investigate these phenomena, I work with experimentalists on a variety of systems: predictive coding in the retina and visual cortex of the rodent, motion coding in area MT, and temporal coding in the zebra finch song system. From these studies, several general principles have emerged, which guide my current research: the hypothesis that neurons are optimized to predict their future inputs, that information in neural populations is represented combinatorially, and that coding in sensori-motor systems is highly dynamic and behaviorally dependent. By working closely with experimentalists, we constrain and test these theories of neural population coding with detailed measurements.


Institution: University of Chicago
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Orit Peleg
orit.peleg@colorado.edu

I am a theorist. I am a broadly trained physicist with a passion for living systems. My research is aimed at understanding how organisms buffer themselves against large environmental fluctuations and accommodate adaptation over a wide range of length and time scales. This includes protein assemblies that remain intact under varying external mechanical and chemical stimuli, beetles that navigate using volatile celestial cues, and honeybee clusters that change their morphology to both withstand mechanical stresses, and to regulate their bulk temperature.


Institution: University of Colorado Boulder
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David Schwab
davidjschwab@gmail.com

I am a theorist. I study the statistical physics of learning in biological and artificial systems.


Institution: CUNY Graduate Center
Website

Agnese Seminara
agnese.seminara@unice.fr

I am a theorist specialised in statistical and fluid mechanics and my work is at the interface with biology. I am interested in biomechanics and navigation in different organisms (from bacteria and fungi, to mice and octopuses).


Institution: CNRS, Institut de Physique de Nice
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Massimo Vergassola
massimo@physics.ucsd.edu

I am a theoretical physicist working on various topics in living systems, which include navigation, development, touch sensation.


Institution: Univ of California - San Diego
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Organizer

Photo & Contact Information Research Interests

Thierry Mora
tmora@lps.ens.fr

I am a theorist. Many biological systems function through the concerted behavior of many connected elements in a self-organised manner, very much like spontaneous ordering and phase transitions in physics. The recent years have witnessed a large increase in the amount of detailed multi-variate data in a variety biological contexts (genomics, electrophysiology, fluorescence microscopy, etc.), offering a unique opportunity to learn these mechanisms of self-organisation directly from data. In my research I study the behaviour of complex biological systems that show interesting emergent phenomena, in immunology, neuroscience, cellular biology, and collective behaviour. I combine a bottom-up approach, in which mechanisms of organisation are hypothesized from efficient design principles, and a top-down approach, where the local rules of interaction are learned from data using statistical learning and statistical physics techniques. I’m particularly interested in three fascinating systems where collective effects play an important role: Population coding of visual information by retinal ganglion cells; Dynamics, diversity, and organization of immune receptor repertoires; Collective behaviour in bird flocks and bacterial micro-colonies.


Institution: Ecole normale superieure and CNRS
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Ilya Nemenman
ilya.nemenman@emory.edu

I am a theorist. I am a physicist working to understand how biological systems, such as cells, organisms, and populations, learn from their surrounding environment and respond to it (we call this “biological information processing”). Put differently, What are the computational primitives employed by living organisms to compute their way through life? We are trying to understand if there are phenomenological, coarse-grained, and yet functionally accurate representations of such biological processes, or if we are forever doomed to every detail mattering. The dream is that, by stripping unnecessary details, we will eventually understand the basics of how we can function reliably in an ever changing world.


Institution: Emory University
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Leo Radzihovsky
radzihov@colorado.edu

Radzihovsky’s theoretical research interests span a broad spectrum of classical and quantum condensed matter. These range from entropy-dominated liquid crystals, colloids, membranes, rubber and other “soft” matter to quantum matter, such as superconductors, magnets, degenerate atomic gases, quantum Hall and other topological states of matter. He aims to understand the nature of phases and phase transitions exhibited by these systems, with the unifying theme of collective universal behavior that emerges at long scales and low energies, driven by a combination of strong interactions, fluctuations, and/or local heterogeneity.


Institution: University of Colorado Boulder
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Greg Stephens
g.j.stephens@vu.nl

I am a theorist. The Stephens Group is helping to pioneer a new field – the physics of behavior: from individual organisms to entire societies. While science of the living world is overwhelmingly focused on the microscopic like the structure of DNA or the pattern of electrical activity in our brains, all of these processes serve the greater evolutionary goals of the organism: to find food, avoid predators and reproduce. This is the behavioral scale, and despite it’s importance, our quantitative understanding of behavior is much less advanced. But how do we quantify the emergent dynamics of entire organisms? What principles characterize living movement? Research in our group addresses these fundamental questions with a modern biophysics approach and model systems ranging from the nematode C. elegans to zebrafish and honeybee collectives. We combine theoretical ideas from statistical physics, information theory and dynamical systems and work in close collaboration with scientists from Amsterdam, OIST and around the world to develop and analyze novel, quantitative experiments of organisms in natural motion.


Institution: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and OIST Graduate University
Website

Aleksandra Wolczak
awalczak@lpt.ens.fr

I am a theoretical biophysicist working on various topics in living systems including development, the effects of selection on population genealogies, collective behavior of bird flocks and statistical descriptions of the immune system.


Institution: CNRS
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