Welcome!
We study soft materials and biological tissues to understand how they deform and flow in response to forces. Our goal is to uncover the rules describing how these materials move and deform. A major focus is on connecting the forces produced inside cells to the behavior of entire tissues. To this end, we study how cells interpret and respond to mechanical forces and how cells generate and transmit forces to their surroundings.
Our research is primarily experimental. We often develop new experimental methods and new approaches to analyze data. This work is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of engineering mechanics, soft matter physics, applied math, and cell biology.
By discovering the fundamental rules for how materials, tissues, and cells deform and flow, we provide essential insights to build theories and mathematical models. With the guidance and testing provided by our experiments, the theories and models will be able to predict how soft materials and biological tissues behave under real-world conditions and in the human body, which will facilitate design of materials that resist damage, improve our understanding of how tissue properties affect progression of fibrotic diseases, produce deeper insight for how cancer cells spread through the body, and spur treatments that speed up wound healing.