Team

Join us!
Team members
Collaborators

Join us!

How to apply

We are always looking for curious and enthusiastic team members!
Positions are currently open for:

  • Summer internships
  • Undergraduate students
  • Graduate students
  • Postdoctoral researchers

At the moment, our main priority is experimentalists.

To apply: Simply send me a short email so we can start chatting!

It would be helpful if you include a

  • CV with a list of publications
  • Contact details of 2-3 people who agreed to write you a reference letter.
  • Statement of research interests (~2 pages) describing why you want to join our team, what skills you can bring in, and ideas for potential projects you want to explore together.
  • For prospective postdocs, a list of potential fellowships that we could apply to.

If you have any questions, please  get in touch and I will be happy to discuss them directly!

Team members

Arnold Mathijssen

Arnold JTM Mathijssen

Assistant Professor

Department of Physics & Astronomy

University of Pennsylvania

Arnold was named ’30 under 30′ by Scientific American, and ‘Best Overall Undergraduate’ after completing his MSci at University College London (2012). He was awarded the Sir Sam Edwards PhD Thesis Prize for his work in the group of Julia Yeomans FRS at the University Oxford (2016). Supported by an HFSP cross-disciplinary fellowship, he moved to the lab of Manu Prakash at Stanford University, where he won the Charles Kittel Award from the American Physical Society (APS) far west division.

Outside the lab, Arnold is very enthusiastic about science communication. He worked editor-in-chief of The New Collection, a student-led magazine, and now he frequently organises family events, school visits and science hikes.

Departmental profile page          

Postdocs

Ercag Pince

Erçağ Pinçe

Senior Research Scientist

Erçağ’s research is focused on understanding the dynamics behind the assembly of large microbial communities. Specifically, through studying motility and microbial swimming patterns, he aims to discover assembly mechanisms leading to emergent spatial organization and coexistence within diverse bacterial species.

Erçağ did his PhD in 2016 under the supervision of Giovanni Volpe at the Department of Physics at Bilkent University, Ankara. He conducted postdoctoral research in AMOLF, the Netherlands between 2016 & 2018 and in Rowland Institute at Harvard University between 2018 & 2021.

When not in the lab., he enjoys boxing, watching arthouse movies, reading Russian literature, and collecting Bluray discs from the criterion collection.

Send email   LinkedIn Page 

Students

Hannah Xiao

Hannah Xiao

Vagelos Scholar in the Molecular Life Sciences

Hannah is a sophomore in the Vagelos Scholars program majoring in Physics. Outside of class, she enjoys woodworking, smoking meats, and listening to the CNBC Youtube channel while playing minesweeper.

Send email
Raman Thadani

Raman Thadani

Vagelos Scholar in the Molecular Life Sciences

Raman is a sophomore in the Vagelos Scholars program who hopes to attend graduate school in Physics. He loves to visit new places, plays a great many sport (but is mediocre in all), and enjoys serious discussion on existential threats to humanity at 3am with friends. 

  Send email   LinkedIn Page
Samantha Donovan

Samantha Donovan

Vagelos Scholar in the Molecular Life Sciences

Samantha is a Vagelos Scholar in the Molecular Life Sciences interested in the intersection of physics and public health. Sam loves reading, music, going to museums and hiking with friends.
Send email

Some of our collaborators & co-authors

  • Saad Bhamla (Georgia Tech, United States)
  • Zev Bryant (Stanford University, United States)
  • Sapna Chitlapilly Dass (Texas A&M, United States)
  • Eric Clement (ESPCI Paris, France)
  • Abdallah Daddi-Moussa-Ider (University of Düsseldorf, Germany)
  • Ahmet F Demirörs (ETH, Switzerland)
  • Amin Doostmohammadi (Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark)
  • Nuris Figueroa-Morales (CU Boulder, United States)
  • Joost de Graaf (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
  • Francsica Guzman-Lastra (Universidad Mayor, Chile)
  • Raphael Jeanneret (Ecole Normale Supérieure, France)
  • Chenyu Jin (University of Bayreuth, Germany)
  • Anke Lindner (ESPCI Paris, France)
  • Maciej Lisicki (University of Warsaw, Poland)
  • Hartmut Löwen (University of Düsseldorf, Germany)
  • Corinna Maass (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
  • Wallace F Marshall (UCSF, United States)
  • Andreas Menzel (University of Düsseldorf, Germany)
  • Endre J Mossige (UC Santa Barbara, United States)
  • Marco Polin (University of Warwick, United Kingdom)
  • Manu Prakash (Stanford University, United States)
  • Vivek Prakash (University of Miami, United States)
  • Mitya Pushkin (University of York, United Kingdom)
  • Guillermina Ramirez – San Juan (Brandeis University, United States)
  • Tyler Shendruk (University of Loughborough, United Kingdom)
  • Robert S Thorne (University College London, United Kingdom)
  • Julia Yeomans FRS (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
  • Andreas Zöttl (TU Vienna, Austria)
Interested in starting a collaboration together? Please get in touch!