Research portfolio
My present interests centre on collective behaviour in living systems: how active components coordinate, how chromatin organisation shapes transcription, and how biological systems store and process information. I use theoretical, computational and experimental approaches to connect microscopic interactions with emergent dynamics.
Earlier in my training, I worked extensively on quantum magnetism and neutron-scattering studies of frustrated materials. Those projects remain an important part of my research background, but they are not my current focus.
Ongoing
Two projects currently shape the direction of my work.
With Pietro Cicuta
My PhD research focuses on how interactions between beating cilia generate synchronised motion. I am interested in how this collective dynamics that emerge from local interactions and their role in transport and information processing in biological systems.
With Davide Marenduzzo
This project asks whether chromatin-folding states associated with transcription factories can act as stable cellular memories. It connects physical models of genome organisation with the Waddington Landscape to explore how cellular identity may be preserved and restored.
Completed work
Completed projects that led into my present interests in living and nonequilibrium systems.
With Davide Marenduzzo
Using a coarse-grained polymer model, this project investigated how chromatin organisation and transcription-factor dynamics shape gene expression, differentiation, and cellular memory. Telegraph-model analysis connected simulated transcription traces to switching, bursting, and the stabilisation of cellular states.
With Alexander Morozov
This project examined how finite tumbling duration changes the onset of hydrodynamic instability in suspensions of bacterial swimmers. Coupled Smoluchowski equations and linear stability analysis linked microscopic run-and-tumble dynamics to emergent large-scale flows.
Completed work
These projects developed my experience in neutron scattering, magnetic excitations, theoretical modelling, and scientific publishing.
With Chris Stock, Tiberiu Popescu and Others
Neutron spectroscopy and diffraction revealed how symmetry-breaking lattice distortions reshape magnetic exchange and fragment the honeycomb lattice into inequivalent magnetic sublattices.
With Chris Stock, Tiberiu Popescu and Others
High-field neutron spectroscopy was used to study field-tuned excitations in a triangular antiferromagnet near a quantum critical point and their connection to magnetocaloric behaviour.
With Chris Stock
A Green’s-function response model connected spin-wave excitations with single-ion cobalt physics and strongly anisotropic, bond-dependent magnetic exchange.