Poster by Davide at the Active Matter and Active Media Summer School 2022, Cargèse, France

Davide presents his poster on the 7th of October in the Institut d’Études Scientifiques of Cargèse. (Photo by Stefania Ketzetzi.)
Davide presented his work at the Active Matter and Active Media Summer School 2022 in Cargèse, France. His poster “A one-dimensional three-state run-and-tumble model with a ‘cell cycle’“, focuses on the modelling of the dynamics and life cycle of the Caulobacter crescentus with Fokker-Planck equations.

Carolina presents at the ISMC Poznań on the 23rd of September 2022

Trajectory of a microswimmer swimming inside an colloidal array (white dots) in the presence of 9% fuel. The trajectories are collor-coded according to the distance between the microswimmer and its nearest neighbour.(Image by C. van Baalen.)
On the 23rd of September Carolina will present her work on microswimmers in colloidal arrays at the ISMC in Poznań, Poland. In her talk, titled “Confounding Interactions with Obstacles: How Colloidal Lattices Steer the Dynamics of Catalytic Microswimmers“, she will show how colloidal lattices self-assembled at a fluid-fluid interface can steer the dynamics of catalytic microswimmers hovering along the interface.

Presentation by Chun-Jen Chen at DPG Meeting of the Condensed Matter Section, 4th – 9th of Sep. 2022

Chun-Jen Chen in front of the big screen with his presentation slide. (Photo by Robert C. Löffler.)
On the 7th of September, Chun-Jen Chen gave a talk titled “Collective response of microrobotic swarms to external threats” during his participation of the 2022 DPG Meeting of the Condensed Matter Section in Regensburg, Germany. The 15-minute talk focused on the novel stratergy to implement extra feature into a collective social behaviour and corresponding experimental results with microrobotic colloidal particles. The talk also delivered prospective impact of such findings on microrobotic swarm design and undiscovered phase behaviours between collective behavioural states. The meeting gethered a wide range of bio-physists and active/soft-matter physists and trigged inspiring discussion across different projects.

You can find out more detail about the presented work as the contents of this talk was based on Chun-Jen and Clemens Bechinger’s publication at New J. Phys. 24 033001 (2022).

David participates in the Complex Nanophotonics Science Camp 2022 in Windsor, UK

David presenting at Complex Nanophotonics Science Camp. (Photo by Jacopo Bertolotti)
Between the 2nd and the 5th of August David participated in the Complex Nanophotonics Science Camp in Windsor, UK. The Science Camp brought together 60 early-career scientists in the field of photonics but also science writers and editors in an unconventional format – mixing contributed and invited talks, seminars and debates – to present and discuss the latest research and future directions of the field in an open atmosphere and help developing the Complex Nanophotonics community. During this conference David presented a talk on “Elongated active particles in speckle fields“, the questions were many and the community was very interested in the topic. In the journey to Windsor, David visited Phil and Giorgio’s lab, which was a great opportunity to discuss with the other students in the groups.

Presentation by Liam Ruske at Current and Future Themes in Soft & Biological Active Matter, 5 August 2022

The rate at which cells divide or die varies across 3D cell aggregates because cells are competing for resources in the environment. (Image by L. Ruske.)
Modelling the Dynamics of 3D cell aggregates
Liam J. Ruske, Julia Yeomans
Date: 5 August 2022
Time: 11:00 (CEST)
Place: Current and Future Themes in Soft and Biological Matter, Nordita

Abstract:

Multicellular spheroids are self-assembled balls of cells, typically hunderds of microns in diameter. They are important model systems for high throughput screening of the effects of mechanical or oxidative stress on tumors and for testing the efficacy of anti-cancer drugs. Gradients in metabolite concentration and the cell division rate across spheroids lead to gradients in activity, the rate at which the cells use energy to generate forces. This results in cell ordering and flows that can be described using the theories of active nematics. By comparing cell alignment profiles in experiments to model predictions, we can extract dynamical tissue parameters which are difficult to measure directly, thus establishing a link between 3D active fluids and the tissue-scale organization in biological systems.

Liam Ruske participates in Current and Future Themes in Soft & Biological Active Matter, 01-19 August 2022, Stockholm

Participants at the Nordita workshop in Stockholm. (Photo by Boyi Wang)

Between the 1st and the 19th of August 2022 Liam participated in the Nordita workshop Current and Future Themes in Soft & Biological Active Matter. In his talk titled “Modelling the Dynamics of 3D cell aggregates” he motivated how cell divisions and death act as a source of active forces in cellular aggregates and how these processes can be incorporated into continuum models of tissues. Applying this model to 3D living cell aggregates (spheroids) not only allows the inference of dynamic cell parameters from experimentally measured cell alignment profiles, but more generally motivates novel mechanisms for controlling the alignment of cells within aggregates which has been shown to influence the mechanical properties and invasive capabilities of tumors.

David participates in the MoLE conference, 25-29 July, Donostia-San Sebastián

David and Onofrio during the poster session at MoLE conference in Donostia-San Sebastián. (Photos provided by D. Bronte Ciriza)
Between the 25th and the 29th of July 2022 David participated in the MoLE conference in Donostia-San Sebastián. The unexpected demise of Professor Juan José Sáenz, on March 22, 2020, has left his beloved family and friends in shock all over the globe. Following his spirit, MoLE conference 2022 was devoted to honouring his memory the way he would have liked: Appreciated colleagues and friends presenting and discussing their most recent advances, in both electronics and photonics. During this conference David presented a poster on “Elongated active particles in speckle fields“, where he had the chance to discuss the topic with a broad community of interested scientists.

Liam Ruske presented a poster at the Active and Intelligent Living Matter conference, 26 June – 1 July 2022, Erice, Italy

The beatiful view from the conference centre on Mount Cofano. (Photo by L. Ruske)
Between the 26th of June and the 1st of July 2022 Liam participated in the Active and Intelligent Living Matter conference on Sicily, where he presented a poster summarizing several of his research projects about active continuum theories and their application to biological systems.

Sandrine Heijnen presented a poster at the 5th Meeting of the UCL Cross-Disciplinary Network on Soft Materials, 20th June 2022.

Sandrine Heijnen and her poster. (Photos provided by S. Hejnen)
Sandrine Heijnen attended the 5th Meeting of the UCL Cross-Disciplinary Network on Soft Materials on the 20th of June 2022. She presented a poster titled “Emergent Collective Behaviours for Active Particles in Optical Landscapes” showing the recent development in her project regarding the behaviour of superparamagnetic particles in a light illuminated field. The Meeting presented a lot of interesting ideas by introducing both art and architecture, giving rise to a lot of interesting discussions.

David participated in NanoPlasm 2022, 13-17 June, Cetraro, Italy

David during his elevator pitch talk at NanoPlasm 2022. (Photos provided by D. Bronte Ciriza)
Between the 13th and the 17th of June David participated in NanoPlasm 2022, which took place in Cetraro, Calabria, Italy. The conference was focused on the rapidly growing fields of Plasmonics and Nano-Photonics, which are opening new frontiers in nanoscience and advanced technologies via novel cross-disciplinary research activities. During this conference David presented 2 posters (titles: “Machine learning enhanced calculations of optical forces in the geometrical optics approximation” and “Elongated active particles in speckle fields“) and an elevator pitch talk, introducing his work on machine learning for optical forces calculations and his recent work on elongated active particles in speckle fields.