The Faculty of Engineering Sciences
Department of Mechanical Engineering 

Our lab studies how living tissues behave as active materials, focusing on how thousands of tightly interacting cells generate forces, jam and unjam, migrate collectively, and self-organize into surprising multicellular patterns. We combine advanced microscopy, quantitative image analysis, custom 3D-printed mechanical tools, and mathematical modeling to uncover the physical principles that govern epithelial architecture and dysfunction. These biophysical rules allow us to explain how tissues transition between solid-like and fluid-like states, how hidden reticular structures emerge to regulate proliferation, and how mesoscale mechanical perturbations propagate through crowded cell layers. Beyond fundamental physics of living systems, we apply our tools to clinically important questions—such as how asthmatic epithelia remodel, how alveolar cells become biophysically trapped in transitional states in pulmonary fibrosis, and how blood clots generate forces that impact vascular injury. By integrating physics, engineering, and biology, our research reveals universal mechanical principles that shape tissue health, development, and disease.

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We aim to foster in the lab a research environment that will encourage experimental exploration. The contour of exploration will be drawn around mechanical features in the collective behaviour of epithelial cells in culture conditions, such as force, motion, and shape. These will be the protagonists of each new project as it comes to life.