Motility in Microbes, Molecules and Matter

6 and 7 December 2021
IoP headquarters, 37 Caledonian Rd, London N1 9BU

Organised by:
Benjamín Loewe (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
Marco Mazza (Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical Modelling, Loughborough University)
Tyler Shendruk (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)

Image credit: Esinam Dake, Loughborough University

Overview

Living systems are continually in active motion. From global scale migration down to enzymatic conformational transitions, kinetic action is one of the principal strategies by which living systems self-organize. Moreover, motility as a response to stimuli is a cardinal strategy by which living organisms capitalize on opportunities and contend against threats. Motion is then a characteristic hallmark of biological complexity; however, it is also fundamentally physical. This has made studying motility is one of the most fruitful points of collaboration between biologists and physicists.

Yet, despite the collaborative successes of biologists and physicists working to understand instances of motility, this topic remains an exciting frontier, encompassing many biologically and medically important systems across length scales. However, only a subset of these topics have well-developed, community-spanning collaborative networks. By extending the network of collaborations to include systems that have not yet received sufficient multidisciplinary attention, we believe both research communities will benefit. Thus, the proposed workshop seeks to stimulate new collaborative partnerships between experimental biologists and computational physicists.

Who should attend?

The workshop is designed to be accessible to academics from a wide range of disciplines and career stages and should be of relevance to biologists, physicists and mathematicians.

Format

As an in-person workshop, this workshops seeks to engage participants in meaningful discussions and capitalize on the pronounced eagerness of academics to engage once again with one another. To optimize engagement multiple opportunities for participants to discuss one-on-one or in small groups are being scheduled, including:

Poster Session: A much missed opportunity for (i) students and ECRs to show-case their work to senior academics, (ii) participants to browse the state-of-the-art and (iii) peers at all academic levels to discuss and debate specific approaches and future directions.
Breakout Coffees: Intervals after sessions that allow for continued discussion outside of formal questions periods. Our collective experience with online conferences and workshops have made clear just how important these periods are for participants to discuss, critique or effuse over presented research. We have scheduled sufficient time for meaningful interactions within these breakout periods.
Dinner Discussion: An important moment for newly formed acquaintances to have longer discussions about the nature of their research programmes, the big questions that they seek to answer and broader opportunities for collaboration that may exist. This will act as an important opportunity to establish potential collaborative relationships.

Programme

Day one	Monday 6 December
9.00	Ray Goldstein (University of Cambridge) Fluid Mechanics of Mosaic Ciliated Tissues
9.45	Andela Saric (UCL) Durotaxis of passive nanoparticles on membranes
10.30	Coffee break + Posters
10.45	Pietro Cicuta (University of Cambridge) + Seyyed Nader Rasuli (University of Guilan) Microspheres in an External Flow: a Dance of Cause and Effect
11.15	Thomas Waigh (University of Manchester) The anomalous tango of hemocytes in drosophila embryos
12.00	Mehrana Raeisian Nejad (University of Oxford) Extensile stress promotes out-of-plane flows in active layers
12.15	Lunch + Posters
14.00	Yanlan Mao (UCL) Tissue dynamics during epithelial repair
14.45	Antoine Allard (Université Laval) Microbial narrow-escape is facilitated by wall interactions
15.15	Kristian Thijssen (University of Cambridge) Control of Active Nematics through Friction
15.45	Coffee + Posters
16.00	Debasish Das (University of Strathclyde) Cilia density and flow velocity affect alignment of motile cilia from brain cells
16.45	Smitha Maretvadakethope (University of Liverpool)The impact of shape, shear and boundary conditions when modelling micro-swimmer distributions and boundary encounter angles in channel flow
17.15	Samia Ouhajji (Leiden University)Viscotaxis of synthetic microswimmers
17.30	Matthias Krause (KCL) Control of lamellipodial motility during cell migration
18.15	End of Day 1

Day Two	Tuesday 7 December
9.00	Julia Yeomans (University of Oxford) Are Confluent Cell Layers Extensile or Contractile?
9.45	Rachel Bearon (University of Liverpool) How shape affects the transport of micro-swimmers in shear flows
10.30	Coffee break + Posters
10.45	Andrej Vilfan (Max Planck Institute) Minimum dissipation theorem for microswimmers
11.15	Kirsty Wan (University of Exeter) Phenotyping microbial motility in microfluidic confinement
12.00	Mixon Faluweki Collective motion of filamentous cyanobacteria
12.15	Lunch + Postersue
14.00	Chris Toseland (University of Sheffield) Nanoscale organisation within the mammalian nucleus by molecular motors
14.45	Aondoyima Ioratim-Uba (University of Bristol) The nonlinear motion of cells subject to external forces
15.15	Paolo Caldarelli (Insititut Pasteur) Self-organized tissue mechanics underlie embryonic regulation
15.45	Coffee + Posters
16.00	Marco Polin (University of Warwick) Phototaxis of microalgae: lessons from Chlamydomonas an Micromonas
16.45	Stoyan Smoukov Novel Bottom-up Active Matter
17.15	Philip Pearce (UCL) Biological pattern formation in spatio-temporally fluctuating environments
18.00	End of conference