The Physics of Living Systems Group in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech seeks to understand how physics can inform questions of structure, function, and dynamics in biological systems, and to study fundamental physics questions posed by biological systems. Faculty associated with the group work on problems in a range of biological length and time scales: from evolution of planetary ecosystems over hundreds of millions of years to locomotion of 10 cm long lizards running on sand at 1 m/sec, to the mechanics of ~20 micron diameter cells and their dynamics on second to minute time scales, to assembly of viruses within 100 msec to the study of how DNA packing influences transcriptional dynamics and activity at the molecular level.
Faculty Members
Jennifer Curtis
Professor
Research Interests: Cell biophysics. Cell mechanics of adhesion, migration and dynamics. Immunophysics and immunoengineering. Hyaluronan glycobiology. Hyaluronan synthase. Physics of tissues.
Flavio Fenton
Professor
Research Interests: Complex Systems, Experimental physiology, Biophysics, High performance computing and GPU.
Daniel Goldman
Dunn Family Professor
Research Interests: The biomechanics of locomotion of organisms and robots on and within complex materials. Physics of granular media.
Harold Kim
Professor
Research Interests: Single-molecule and single-cell studies of genome architecture.
Simon Sponberg
Dunn Family Associate Professor of Physics and Biological Sciences
Research Interests: Neuromechancis, Locomotor Control, Multiscale Physics of Muscle, Maneuverability, Computational Neuroscience
Peter Yunker
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Nonequilibrium systems, densely packed active matter with life and death events, microbial physics, structural mechanics, fracture mechanics, evolution.
