Physics of Living Matter
Ricard Alert's group
Welcome to the Physics of Living Matter group!
Our group ultimately seeks to uncover physical principles that govern the phenomena of life. In particular, we use and develop the physics of active matter to understand collective behaviors in cells and tissues. We study biological processes such as collective cell migration, the self-organization of bacterial colonies, the growth of tissues, as well as physical phenomena such as flocking, phase separation, and turbulence in active fluids. This type of work puts concepts from statistical physics, soft matter, and fluid dynamics in contact with important questions in biology. You can read more about our research directions here.
Our group is currently both at the University of Barcelona and at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden. Our work is funded by ICREA, the Max Planck Society and an ERC Starting Grant.
