The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is organizing an Institute Lecture on October 29, 2024.

 
The details of the lecture are provided below:

Title: Active matter physics: A new approach to mechanobiology?

Speaker: Prof. Julia Yeomans (FRS), Professor of Physics, The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, UK.

About the Speaker: Professor of Physics, FRS. The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, UK. 

Her research focuses on theoretical modelling of processes in complex fluids including liquid crystals, drops on hydrophobic surfaces, microchannels, as well as bacteria.

Speaker's webpage: http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/JuliaYeomans/index.html

Abstract:

Active materials such as bacteria, molecular motors and self-propelled colloids are Nature’s engines. They extract energy from their surroundings at a single particle level and use this to do work. Active matter is becoming an increasingly popular area of research because it provides a testing ground for the ideas of non-equilibrium statistical physics, because of its relevance to the collective behaviour of living creatures, from cells to starlings, and because of its potential in designing nanomachines.

Dense active materials can show chaotic flow structures characterised by high vorticity and self-propelled topological defects, a state called mesoscale turbulence. I shall describe the physics underlying mesoscale turbulence and discuss examples where this may be relevant to living systems: the expansion of bacterial colonies, the motility of confluent cell layers, and the distribution of malignant cells in breast cancer.