Research

How do cellular heterogeneity and tissue mechanics shape one another?

Biological tissues are active, heterogeneous materials. Whether during embryonic development or tumour progression, the way mechanical properties (deformations, flows) and cellular heterogeneities (adhesion, contractility) feed back on each other remains largely unresolved. I probe these feedbacks by building robust experimental frameworks at the interface between soft matter physics and developmental biology.

Force sensors in living tissues

Measuring the rheology of the extracellular matrix during development, using active ferrofluid droplets injected into the embryo.

Epithelial mechanics

How the curvature of a substrate dictates the three-dimensional shape of cell monolayers, and what surface tensions suffice to explain it.

Research programme

Both directions share one conviction: a physical model of a tissue is only worth what the measurement that challenges it is worth. My aim is to build the experiments that make those measurements possible, then use them to test (and sometimes break) the models we hold.

The immediate objective is to turn force-sensing droplets into a quantitative, routine tool: sensors that self-functionalise in situ, are calibrated against known rheology, and can report stresses continuously inside an embryo over the course of development. Coupling that read-out with the continuum descriptions validated on epithelia would allow us to move from measuring forces at a point to mapping the stress field of a whole developing tissue, and to ask which heterogeneities the tissue actually cares about.

This programme sits squarely between soft matter physics, experimental instrumentation for living matter, and developmental biology, and it is the reason I keep both an experimental bench and a modelling notebook open at the same time.