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| At Sacco's Bowl Haven, August 2016 | At Welsh and Dickey loop trail, July 2017 | At Mt. Monadnock, July 2018 | At Cambridge Brewing Company, October 2018 |
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Celebratory lunch at Toscano, May 2019 |
At Greenleaf hut and Lafayette mountain, July 2019 | At Trapology, November 2019 |
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| At Jm Curley after escape room, November 2019 |
At Red Fox escape room, January 2020 |
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Ariel Amir, Principal Investigator
Office: Pierce Hall 321 Ariel Amir grew up in Israel and received his B.S. from Hebrew University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science. In 2011, he came to Harvard University as a Junior Fellow, and in 2014, he joined the Harvard Paulson School as Assistant Professor of Applied Math and Applied Physics. His research centers on the theory of complex systems, which he applies to problems from physics, materials science, and living organisms, often in collaboration with experimental groups. He emphasizes the need to recognize unifying principles that cross disciplinary boundaries. For example, he has shown that the behavior within a class of different glassy systems is universal, and is currently working on extending these tools to systems not typically viewed as “glasses.” Similarly, his research in biophysics employs dislocation theory—widely used to analyze mechanical properties of solids—in modeling bacterial cell wall growth. Methods from statistical mechanics allowed him to address the problem of how microorganisms such as bacteria control the size of their cells. Current work in the group is focused on various aspects of disordered systems and stochastic processes, including structural coloration (generation of colors by means of specific structures at the sub-micron scale rather than pigments), shape regulation in microorganisms and the physics of glassy systems. |
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Jie Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow
Jie is generally interested in statistical physics of biological systems and soft matter. He has been working on different topics including population growth, cell size regulation, driven amorphous solids, and jammed packings. |
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Ethan Levien, Postdoctoral Fellow Ethan is interested in understanding stochastic processes with applications in biological systems. He has worked on problems in chemical reaction network theory and diffusion in random environments. Most recently, he has been studying bet-hedging in microbes. |
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Ahmad Zareei, Postdoctoral Fellow Email: zareei@berkeley.edu Ahmad is generally interested in fluid dynamics, nonlinear waves, continuum mechanics, and dynamical systems. He is currently working on modelling flow in porous media using random resistor networks and also modelling dynamics of Euler's disk with a focus on dominant dissipation mechanism due to purely elastic waves radiation. |
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Yipei Guo, Graduate Student
Biophysics, G6 |
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Paul Dieterle, Graduate Student
Physics, G4 Paul did his undergrad at Caltech and works on cell signaling, particularly during immune response.
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Jiseon Min, Graduate Student
MCB, G3 Jiseon is generally interested in making a generalized mathematical model for biological phenomena, ranging from protein partitioning inside a cell (Lin et al. 2018) to intercellular interactions. Jiseon is currently working on swarming Neutrophils with Paul and Irimia's group in MGH. |
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Prathitha Kar, Graduate Student CCB, G3 Email: prathithakar@g.harvard.edu Prathitha is interested in finding molecular mechanisms controlling various biological phenomenon using theoretical tools. He is currently studying the size regulation of various organelles like flagella in Chlamydomonas. |
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Deng Pan, Graduate Student Applied Physics, G2 Email: dpan@g.harvard.edu Deng is generally interested in the statistical physics and mathematics of disorder and complex systems. He has been working on different topics including disorder photonic crystals and rattling complex network. Currently he is working on flows in random networks with Ahmad. |
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Luyi Qiu, Graduate Student Applied Physics, G2 Email: lqiu@g.harvard.edu
Luyi’s research is focused on a complex system of cell growth from a mechanical perspective. She is using tools from elasticity, geometry, and numerical computation to address problems such as how bacteria maintain a robust shape. Most recently, she has been studying the stability of bacteria mechanical structure. |
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Nitin Upadhyaya, Postdoctoral Fellow
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Po-Yi Ho, Graduate Student Current: Huang lab, Stanford University Po-Yi's research focused on understanding how cells grow and divide. How do cells regulate and coordinate the timing of their divisions and the replication of their chromosomes? What is the stochastic nature of these processes, and how are they controlled? |
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Felix Wong, Graduate Student Current: Collins lab, MIT Felix's research focused on cell mechanis, and in particular on understanding the subcellular organization and regulatory processes needed for bacteria to maintain a robust shape. He was addressing this question using tools from differential geometry to coarse-grained numerical computation.
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Felix Barber, Graduate Student Current: Rojas lab, NYU Felix was trying to understand the regulation of cell size through a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches. He was working on this problem in budding yeast, and had a joint supervision by Andrew Murray. |
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Caleb Q. Cook, Undergraduate Student Physics and Mathematics, Class of 2015 Caleb was studying the optical properties of slowly chirped dielectric mirrors and their applications in biological systems, such as butterflies and beetles. |
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Michael Landry, Undergraduate Student Physics and Mathematics, Class of 2016 |
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Mark Arildsen, Undergraduate Student Physics and Mathematics, Class of 2016 Mark was developing optical models for the chirally selective reflectors found in the elytra of a number of species of scarab beetle. |
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Olumakinde Ogunnaike, Undergraduate Student Physics, Class of 2017 Makinde was modeling the diffusive behavior of quantum mechanical wavepackets in noisy environments. |
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Adam Frim, Undergraduate Student Physics, Class of 2018 Adam was modeling the dynamics of the Euler's Disk with a particular focus on observed auditory events. |
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Nisarga Paul, Undergraduate Student Physics, Class of 2019 Nisarga was modeling the diffusion of quantum mechanical wavepackets on a lattice arising from time-dependent noise. He is now a Ph. D. student at Harvard in high energy physics. |