Physics Colloquium: "Biomedical Active Matter"

About

Please join the Department of Physics in welcoming Arnold Mathijssen, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, for his talk titled, "Biomedical Active Matter."

BIO: Arnold Mathijssen is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania and associate editor at the journal Physics of Fluids. Arnold completed his PhD in biophysics with Julia Yeomans FRS at the University Oxford (2016), and a postdoc in bioengineering with Manu Prakash at Stanford University (2020). Arnold received an NSF CAREER Award, the Cottrell Scholars Award, the APS Charles Kittel Award, an HFSP Cross-Disciplinary Fellowship, the UK IoP Sir Sam Edwards PhD Thesis Prize, and the ‘30 under 30’ Award by Scientific American. Arnold is also a popular science communicator known for culinary fluid mechanics and the science of pour-over coffee, with coverage in The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, FOX, USA Today, and Food & Wine Magazine.

ABSTRACT: Living systems are made of active materials, where microscopic components work together to perform macroscopic biological tasks. The collapse of these collective functionalities leads to diseases, which may be understood better using models based on fundamental physics principles. Moreover, these health conditions may be treated with synthetic active materials that exploit biomimetic self-organization and self-healing. In this talk, I will discuss this new field of biomedical active matter and highlight a few examples from our research with bacteria. At the molecular scale, we found that non-equilibrium diffusion enhances microbial nutrient uptake and carbon capture. At the cellular scale, we discovered that the cooperation between bacterial flagella enables upstream swimming against flows. At the tissue scale, we showed that cilia can enhance pathogen clearance by exploiting inertia, by letting bacteria surf on metachronal waves. Finally, at the level of biomedical devices, we discovered that bacterial biofilms can be removed efficiently using self-cleaning magnetic active carpets. Together, this work sheds new light on the physics of pathogens and offers solutions that may be implemented in healthcare technologies.

This event will be held in person only.