In our lab, when we see amazing things like slingshot spiders and wriggling worm blobs, we can’t help but ask: HOW? How do organisms do that? What are the physics behind it? What extraordinary discoveries or inventions can be made using the same biological principles?
These are the questions that drive us and our research program.
Organismal Biophysics
We want to understand how extraordinary organisms achieve seemingly impossible feats, from ultrafast motions to agile locomotion and more. Our goal is to discover the underlying principles, develop mathematical models, and see if and how we can engineer a prototype that can replicate the behavior. This work is entirely curiosity driven.
Entangled Active Matter
Unlike schools of fish or flocks of birds, worm blobs move as a single, entangled collective. We work to understand entangled collectives - such as worm blobs - to harness their biomechanics, materials, and morphological computations. This allows us to build living and robotic mimics.
Frugal Science
Science and medicine often require specific, and historically very expensive, hardware. We engineer low-cost alternatives to important tools in science and medicine, including low-cost electroporators and low-cost hearing aids, to help build a more equitable future.
Nurturing and encouraging curiosity is immensely important to me. So many are losing their capacity for wonder, believing that their ideas do not matter because they don’t solve big problems. But now more than ever, we need ideas from unexpected places.
I was working in a remote village in Madagascar, conducting field trials on a frugal paperfuge for malaria diagnostics. A community health worker laughed at my toy-like device, commenting: “This is the scientific hardware you came up with at Stanford?”
The next day she approached with her own version, made from the lid of a pickle jar and sewing thread. She had even improved the design, attaching plastic holders to hold the blood capillary.
This experience gets to the heart of my curiosity-driven research.
I want to help inspire others, regardless of their background, to invent, and create, and ask questions. To do science, and engineer tools, and help solve problems together.
