Active mechanics, from single cells to cell layers, tissues and development

Workshop theme

This workshop brings together experimental and theoretical researchers who work on cell mechanics, on three different scales. At the microscopic scale, the cytoskeletal active network shapes the cell and generates active forces. At the mesoscale, the collective motion and mechanics of cells gives rises to tissues such as epithelial cell sheets which have become a premier biophysical model system. In the full biological context of cell and developmental mechanics, such as in model tissue organoids, shapes and function arise through the interplay of this active mechanics with morphogens and signalling. Our workshop will explore these three scales of size and complexity, with a view towards bridging the gaps between communities and developing a true multiscale understanding.

Applications for this workshop are now closed

Fees

Registration Only

Registration Package: £ 218
Student Registration Package: £ 168

The Registration Package includes admission to all seminars, lunches and refreshments on the days that lectures take place (Monday - Friday), wine reception and formal dinner, but does not include other meals or accommodation.

Formal Dinner Only

Formal Dinner: £ 60

Participants on the Accommodation Package or Registration Package, including organisers and speakers, are automatically included in this event. For all remaining participants who would like to attend, such as programme participants, the above charge will apply.

Accommodation

Unfortunately we do not have any accommodation to offer so all successful applicants will need to source their own accommodation.

Please see the Hotels Combined website for a list of local hotels and guesthouses.

Meals

Lunch

Lunch timings and location will be confirmed with timetable.

Evening Meal

Participants are free to make their own arrangements for dinner.

Formal Dinner

The Formal Dinner location and date is to be confirmed. Participants on the Accommodation Package or Registration Package, including organisers and speakers, are automatically included in this event.

Timetable

Monday 4th September 2023
09:00 to 09:35	Morning Coffee and Registration in the foyer	No Room Required
09:35 to 09:40	Milla Kibble Aalborg Universitet Welcome Talk	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Pascal Silberzan Institut Curie; CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) Chair: Silke Henkes Emergence of flows and tridimensional structures in active cell monolayers	Room 1
10:20 to 11:00	Julia Yeomans University of Oxford Chair: Silke Henkes Modelling collective cell dynamics using active matter physics	Room 1
11:00 to 11:30	Morning Coffee in the foyer	No Room Required
11:30 to 11:50	Jan Rozman University of Oxford Shape-tension coupling produces nematic order in an epithelium vertex model	Room 1
11:50 to 12:10	Yash Rana Harvard University Chair: Silke Henkes Spatial Patterning of Mitochondrial Energy Production in Mouse Oocytes	Room 1
12:10 to 12:30	Andreas Schoenit Institut Jacques Monod Intercellular adhesion regulates cell competition in epithelia	Room 1
12:30 to 13:50	Lunch at Churchill College	No Room Required
13:50 to 14:30	Dapeng Bi Northeastern University Chair: Karen Alim Nonlinear Elasticity and Rheological Behavior in Dense Tissues	Room 1
14:30 to 15:10	Edouard Hannezo Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria) Chair: Karen Alim Collective cell migration in complex environments	Room 1
15:10 to 15:40	Afternoon Tea in the foyer	No Room Required
15:40 to 16:20	Madan Rao National Centre for Biological Sciences Chair: Karen Alim Encoding and Decoding of Molecular Information in Distributed Cellular Systems with Feedback Control	Room 1
16:20 to 17:00	Yi Jiang None / Other Chair: Karen Alim Follow the leader: Modeling collective cancer invasion	Room 1
17:00 to 18:00	Welcome Wine Reception at INI	No Room Required

Tuesday 5th September 2023
09:00 to 09:40	Kaoru Sugimura University of Tokyo Chair: Ramin Golestanian Image-based inference of mechanics underlying epithelial morphogenesis	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Helene Delanoë-Ayari Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Chair: Ramin Golestanian Strong deformation of 3D cellular aggregates: from cellular deformation to elastocapillarity	Room 1
10:20 to 11:00	Francois Graner Université de Paris; CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) Chair: Ramin Golestanian Collective migration of epithelial cells: from animal to lab, and back	Room 1
11:00 to 11:30	Group Photo and Morning Coffee in the foyer	No Room Required
11:30 to 12:00	Nir Gov Weizmann Institute of Science Chair: Ramin Golestanian Guided by curvature: A theoretical model of cellular shape dynamics and motility, coupling curvature and activity	Room 1
12:00 to 12:40	Xavier Trepat Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia Chair: Ramin Golestanian Epithelial mechanics from the bottom up	Room 1
12:40 to 13:50	Lunch at Churchill College	No Room Required
13:50 to 14:30	Carl-Philipp Heisenberg IST Austria Chair: Andela Saric The role of friction forces in oocyte shape changes	Room 1
14:30 to 15:10	Nikta Fakhri Massachusetts Institute of Technology Chair: Andela Saric The many faces of living chiral crystals	Room 1
15:10 to 15:40	Afternoon Tea in the foyer	No Room Required
15:40 to 16:20	Primoz Ziherl Univerza v Ljubljani Chair: Andela Saric Wrinkling of simple epithelial tissues	Room 1

Wednesday 6th September 2023
09:00 to 09:40	Andela Saric IST Austria; University College London Chair: Julia Yeomans Original Curve: Reshaping of archaeal cells	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Karsten Kruse Université de Genève Chair: Julia Yeomans Establishment of positional and orientational order in auditory epithelia through junctional force patterning	Room 1
10:20 to 11:00	Boris Shraiman University of California, Santa Barbara Chair: Julia Yeomans Epithelial tissue as an Active Solid	Room 1
11:00 to 11:30	Morning Coffee in the foyer	No Room Required
11:30 to 11:50	Fridtjof Brauns University of California, Santa Barbara Chair: Julia Yeomans The geometric basis of epithelial convergent extension	Room 1
11:50 to 12:20	Jennifer Schwarz Syracuse University Chair: Julia Yeomans Using model active tissues containing active chromatin to test multi-scale hypotheses in cellular collectives	Room 1
12:20 to 13:50	Lunch at Churchill College	No Room Required
13:50 to 17:00	Poster session - Posters will be on display for informal discussion	No Room Required
19:30 to 22:00	Formal Dinner at Churchill College	No Room Required

Thursday 7th September 2023
09:00 to 09:40	Katja Roeper MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Chair: Anton Souslov Coordinating morphogenetic events: supracellular actomyosin cables as mechanical insulators	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Guillame Salbreux University of Geneva Chair: Anton Souslov Active flows in three-dimensional cell aggregates	Room 1
10:20 to 11:00	Thomas Lecuit Aix-Marseille University Chair: Anton Souslov Patterning and encoding tissue shape with genes and mechanics	Room 1
11:00 to 11:30	Morning Coffee in the foyer	No Room Required
11:30 to 11:50	Aondoyima Ioratim-uba University of Bristol Chair: Anton Souslov Mechano-chemical active feedback generates convergence extension in epithelial tissue	Room 1
11:50 to 12:10	Tatyana Gavrilchenko Simons Foundation Chair: Anton Souslov The Drosophila Tracheal Terminal Cell: an intriguing model system for growth and distribution	Room 1
12:10 to 12:30	Madhusudhan Venkadesan Yale University Chair: Anton Souslov Mean-field crossbridge dynamics break down in frustration	Room 1
12:30 to 13:50	Lunch at Churchill College	No Room Required
13:50 to 14:30	Masaki Sano Shanghai Jiao Tong University; University of Tokyo Chair: Fred MacKintosh Collective Dynamics of Neural Progenitor Cells: A New Mechanism of Accumulation at Integer Topological Defects	Room 1
14:30 to 15:10	Cornelis Jan Weijer University of Dundee Chair: Fred MacKintosh Analysis and perturbation of cell behaviours controlling gastrulation in the chick embryo	Room 1
15:10 to 15:40	Afternoon Tea in the foyer	No Room Required
15:40 to 16:20	Itai Cohen Cornell University Chair: Fred MacKintosh The mechanical phase transition organizing cartilage shear mechanics and function.	Room 1
16:20 to 17:00	Moumita Das Rochester Institute of Technology Chair: Fred MacKintosh From Rigidity to Resilience: How Rigidity Percolation Transitions Shape Collagenous Tissue Function in Health and Disease	Room 1
17:00 to 18:00	Wine Reception in honour of Alex Levine at the INI	No Room Required

Friday 8th September 2023
09:00 to 09:40	Luca Giomi Universiteit Leiden Chair: Rastko Sknepnek Collective epithelial migration as hexatic defect unbinding	Room 1
09:40 to 10:20	Alexander Fletcher University of Sheffield Chair: Karen Alim Modelling active cell intercalations in Drosophila axis extension	Room 1
10:20 to 11:00	Chair: Rastko Sknepnek Open Discussion	Room 1
11:00 to 11:30	Morning Coffee in the foyer	No Room Required
11:30 to 12:00	Massimo Pica Ciamarra Nanyang Technological University Chair: Rastko Sknepnek From isolated, deformable cells to living tissues: a unified description	Room 1
12:00 to 12:30	Mazi Jalaal Universiteit van Amsterdam Chair: Rastko Sknepnek Active Glassy behaviour in Plant Cells	Room 1
12:30 to 13:50	Lunch at Churchill College	No Room Required
13:50 to 14:20	Bulbul Chakraborty Brandeis University Chair: Ben Simons Activity-Driven Memory and Plasticity of Networks	Room 1
14:20 to 14:40	Carina Dunlop University of Surrey Chair: Ben Simons What do cells and tissues feel? Integration of cell contractility, adhesion and ECM stiffness in mechanosensing	Room 1
14:40 to 15:20	Francois Nedelec University of Cambridge Chair: Ben Simons Simple Chromosome Partitioning Mechanisms Driven by Molecular Motors	Room 1
15:20 to 15:50	Afternoon Tea in the foyer	No Room Required

New statistical physics in living matter: non equilibrium states under adaptive control

Active mechanics, from single cells to cell layers, tissues and development

Organisers

Silke Henkes Universiteit Leiden
Alex Levine University of California, Los Angeles
Fred MacKintosh Rice University
Rastko Sknepnek University of Dundee

Speakers

Dapeng Bi Northeastern University
Fridtjof Brauns University of California, Santa Barbara
Bulbul Chakraborty Brandeis University
Itai Cohen Cornell University
Moumita Das Rochester Institute of Technology
Helene Delanoë-Ayari Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Carina Dunlop University of Surrey
Nikta Fakhri Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alexander Fletcher University of Sheffield
Tatyana Gavrilchenko Simons Foundation
Luca Giomi Universiteit Leiden
Nir Gov Weizmann Institute of Science
Francois Graner Université de Paris; CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
Edouard Hannezo Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria)
Carl-Philipp Heisenberg IST Austria
Aondoyima Ioratim-uba University of Bristol
Mazi Jalaal Universiteit van Amsterdam
Yi Jiang None / Other
Milla Kibble Aalborg Universitet
Karsten Kruse Université de Genève
Thomas Lecuit Aix-Marseille University
Francois Nedelec University of Cambridge
Massimo Pica Ciamarra Nanyang Technological University
Yash Rana Harvard University
Madan Rao National Centre for Biological Sciences
Katja Roeper MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Jan Rozman University of Oxford
Guillame Salbreux University of Geneva
Masaki Sano Shanghai Jiao Tong University; University of Tokyo
Andela Saric IST Austria; University College London
Andreas Schoenit Institut Jacques Monod
Jennifer Schwarz Syracuse University
Boris Shraiman University of California, Santa Barbara
Pascal Silberzan Institut Curie; CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
Kaoru Sugimura University of Tokyo
Xavier Trepat Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia
Madhusudhan Venkadesan Yale University
Cornelis Jan Weijer University of Dundee
Julia Yeomans University of Oxford
Primoz Ziherl Univerza v Ljubljani

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Participants

Ricard Alert Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden
Karen Alim Technische Universität München
Dapeng Bi Northeastern University
Pau Blanco Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Fridtjof Brauns University of California, Santa Barbara
Maria Bruna University of Cambridge
Nolan Burban Institut Curie; Collège de France
Jan Cammann Loughborough University
Mike Cates University of Cambridge
Buddhapriya Chakrabarti University of Sheffield
Bulbul Chakraborty Brandeis University
Chia-Fu Chou Academia Sinica
Itai Cohen Cornell University
Natasha Cowley University of Manchester
Moumita Das Rochester Institute of Technology
Rita de Almeida Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte
Helene Delanoë-Ayari Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Ilyas Djafer-cherif Polish Academy of Sciences
Carina Dunlop University of Surrey
Douglas Durian University of Pennsylvania
Andreas Ehrmann Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria)
Nikta Fakhri Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alexander Fletcher University of Sheffield
Anupama Gannavarapu Rice University
Cristian Giardina Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Luca Giomi Universiteit Leiden
Raymond Goldstein University of Cambridge
Ramin Golestanian Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamics and Self-Organisation; University of Oxford
Nir Gov Weizmann Institute of Science
Francois Graner Université de Paris; CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
Isabella Guido University of Surrey; Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organisation
Quentin Guigue Sorbonne Université
Daniel Haertter Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Edouard Hannezo Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria)
Carl-Philipp Heisenberg IST Austria
Silke Henkes Universiteit Leiden
Malcolm Hillebrand Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden
Sekh Raj Hossein University of Sheffield
Timon Idema Delft University of Technology
Aondoyima Ioratim-uba University of Bristol
Sara Jabbari-farouji Universiteit van Amsterdam
Robert Jack University of Cambridge
Mazi Jalaal Universiteit van Amsterdam
Eduard Jove Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Sravana Chaithanya Kanala venkata University of Dundee
Mehran Kardar Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Diana Khoromskaia The Francis Crick Institute; University College London
Karsten Kruse Université de Genève
Shardool Kulkarni Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Jorge Kurchan École Normale Supérieure
Luke Kurowski-Ford University of Bristol
Thomas Lecuit Aix-Marseille University
Andrea Liu University of Pennsylvania
Tanniemola Liverpool University of Bristol
Sharon Lubkin North Carolina State University
Euan Mackay University of Dundee
Fred MacKintosh Rice University
Morteza Maleki Tarbiat Modares University; University of Tehran
Marco Mazza Loughborough University
Raffaele Mendozza Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Alexander Mietke University of Bristol
Siavash Monfared Niels Bohr Institutet, University of Copenhagen
Kristian Muller-Nedebock Stellenbosch University
SULEMANA MUSAH African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
Juraj Májek IST Austria
Anežka Májková Vienna University of Technology
Francois Nedelec University of Cambridge
Hossein Nemati Universiteit Utrecht
Srishti Patil Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER)
Massimo Pica Ciamarra Nanyang Technological University
Wilson Poon University of Edinburgh
Yash Rana Harvard University
Madan Rao National Centre for Biological Sciences
Katja Roeper MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Navneet Roshan Indian Institute of Science
Jan Rozman University of Oxford
Guillame Salbreux University of Geneva
Masaki Sano Shanghai Jiao Tong University; University of Tokyo
Andela Saric IST Austria; University College London
Tomohiro Sasamoto Tokyo Institute of Technology
Christoph Schmidt Duke University
Andreas Schoenit Institut Jacques Monod
Jennifer Schwarz Syracuse University
Boris Shraiman University of California, Santa Barbara
Pascal Silberzan Institut Curie; CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
Ben Simons University of Cambridge
Rastko Sknepnek University of Dundee
Anton Souslov University of Bath
Kaoru Sugimura University of Tokyo
Kristian Thijssen Niels Bohr Institutet, University of Copenhagen
Elsen Tjhung The Open University
Gyula Toth Loughborough University
Xavier Trepat Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia
Farzan Vafa Harvard University
Madhusudhan Venkadesan Yale University
Cornelis Jan Weijer University of Dundee
Peng Xia Zhejiang University
Guillermo Yanez Feliu Newcastle University
Julia Yeomans University of Oxford
Natsuhiko Yoshinaga Tohoku University
Meng Zhao Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Primoz Ziherl Univerza v Ljubljani