NEWS: Publication in Nature Machine Intelligence:
Artificial microtubules for rapid and collective transport of magnetic microcargoes
Hongri Gu, Emre Hanedan, Quentin Boehler, Tian-Yun Huang, Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen & Bradley J. Nelson
Our mission
The Mathijssen lab is interested in exploring the physics of life: we combine experimental and theoretical techniques across the disciplines of physics and biology.
Our main goals are to unravel the physics of pathogens, to design biomedical materials, and understand the collective functionality of living systems (out of equilibrium). To solve these multi-scale problems we use methods from microbiology, fluid mechanics, omics, statistical physics, microscopy and information theory. Recent themes include hydrodynamic communication, pathogen clearance in the airways, tuning upstream swimming of microrobots, and bacterial contamination dynamics.
These questions are both fundamental in nature (e.g. How can an intelligent system arise from the collective dynamics of its basic components?) and directly applied to our society (e.g. What is the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission within a food supply chain?). Our enthusiasm for research is driven by curiosity and the need for solutions that connect science with the challenges of the world we live in. Besides research, we like organising community events, lab visits and science hikes.
News
Happening now:
- Culinary Fluid Mechanics – now published in Reviews of Modern Physics! [dowload PDF here]
- Summer school on Biophysics in Greece
- We are organising the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP). Please join us at UPenn in January 2024.
Recent events:
- (Jan 2023) Kaufman Early Investigator Award
- (Jan 2023) We are organising the Gordon Research Conference (GRS/GRC) on Active and Adaptive Material Systems.
- (Dec 2022) Omnia Magazine interview: The Physics of Us
- (Nov 2022) Kitchen flows: Making science more accessible, affordable, and curiosity driven
- (Aug 2020) We got our first grant of $1 million to study COVID-19 in the US meat supply chain, in collaboration with Texas A&M University. Read the press release and the Reuters news article here.
Selected Publications
- Mathijssen AJTM, Culver J, Bhamla MS, Prakash M, “Collective intercellular communication through ultra-fast hydrodynamic trigger waves”, Nature 571: 560 (2019) [10.1038/s41586-019-1387-9] [download PDF]
- Ramirez-San Juan GR, Mathijssen AJTM, He M, Jan L, Marshall WF, Prakash M, “Multi-scale spatial heterogeneity enhances particle clearance in airway ciliary arrays”, Nature Physics (2020) [10.1038/s41567-020-0923-8] [download PDF]
- Guzman-Lastra F, Löwen H, Mathijssen AJTM, “Active carpets drive non-equilibrium diffusion and enhanced molecular fluxes”, Nature Communications 12: 1906 (2021) [10.1038/s41467-021-22029-y] [download PDF]
- Mathijssen AJTM, Guzman-Lastra F, Kaiser A, Löwen H, “Nutrient transport by microbial active carpets”, Physical Review Letters 121: 248101 (2018) [10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.248101] [download PDF]
Visit this page for a full publication list.
Join our team
Scientific innovation depends on the diversity of our team, in my opinion. We welcome people regardless of who they are and where they come from. We support each other’s differences, because everyone has unique talents.
Applications are invited from a broad range of academic backgrounds. We are looking for undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral researchers interested in (learning) the fields of biological physics, soft matter, physical biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and data science. Both experimental and theoretical or computational research positions are currently available: Click here to find out more and join us!
Community
- Please sign up now to volunteer for the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP), to be held at UPenn in January 2024
- Join us for the next “Kitchen Science seminar” by Swamy Anantheswaran about the physics of chocolate. Thursday the 4th of May at 2pm in lecture room A8 of the David Rittenhouse Laboratory (DRL).
- Join us for the next “Kitchen Science” outreach event at Penn Alexander School, on May 10th, 2023.
Left: Illustration by Marina Muun
NEWS: Editor’s choice paper in Physical Review Letters:
Collective entrainment and confinement amplify transport by schooling micro-swimmers
Chenyu Jin, Yibo Chen, Corinna C. Maass, Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen
Micro-swimmers can serve as cargo carriers that move deep inside complex flow networks. When a school collectively entrains the surrounding fluid, their transport capacity can be enhanced.
1 liter
air inhaled every breath
75m²
surface area exposed to threats
1,000
bacteria in every breath
1 billion
ciliated cells pumping them back out
NEWS: Paper published in Nature Communications:
Active carpets drive non-equilibrium diffusion and enhanced molecular fluxes
Francisca Guzmán-Lastra, Hartmut Löwen, Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen
Fick’s laws describe the essential physics of diffusion, but it is challenging to extend them to systems out of equilibrium. The authors derive the diffusivity of particles near active carpets – a surface covered with hydrodynamic actuators, which provides a framework for transport in living matter.
“Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
— An essay on criticism, Alexander Pope (1688-1744)