Meet our authors (2): Danny

Softbites team introduces its official authors. Find here our second post of our series of interviews. You can read Danny’s posts here.

Who are you and what is your research focus?

I am a physics Ph.D. student at Yale University studying theoretical biophysics. I use biology to inspire my search for new ideas in physics and use that new physics to learn new biology. Specifically, I study entropy production in an attempt to understand how biological systems use and dissipate energy.

Can you describe this picture illustrating your research?

I primarily study the cell cytoskeleton, so it is fitting for the image to be from the cover of a recent textbook edited by Thomas D. Pollard (Yale) and Robert D. Goldman (Northwestern) called The Cytoskeleton. The image itself was provided courtesy of Harald Herrmann (University of Heidelberg). It shows a microscopy image of a cell with different components of the cytoskeleton labeled with fluorescent proteins — actin (blue), microtubules (green), and intermediate filaments (red).

Cytoskeleton
Microscopy image of a cell with different components of the cytoskeleton labeled with fluorescent proteins — actin (blue), microtubules (green), and intermediate filaments (red).

Why do you think the science you do is important?

The work I do is very basic research — it doesn’t have an immediate practical impact that I can think of. However, uncovering exactly how cells use energy is an important step not only towards understanding biology, but can also lead to design principles to be used in micron-sized, soft, engineered materials. Also, from a pure physics point of view, we don’t understand out-of-equilibrium systems anywhere near as well as we understand equilibrated systems, and living things are about as far from equilibrium as you can get.

When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist and what were the crucial steps that took you to your current project?

I didn’t know I wanted to be a scientist until halfway through my first year of college. I entered school wanting to study music and business, but a class in acoustics quickly converted me to pure physics. I didn’t know what research was until my fourth year, but once I got a taste I knew I wanted to do more. I started out doing experiments in a soft matter lab studying colloids (micron-sized plastic spheres in water) under the mentorship of another Softbites writer, Christine Middleton (Hi Christine!). I found cells to be more interesting versions of colloids and decided to study biophysics in graduate school.
I was turned on to my current project for both practical and esoteric reasons. My moonshot idea of what I want to do with science is to identify a transition in matter from living to non-living in the same way we understand the transition from water to ice. This highfalutin idea has led me to the realm of understanding cells as information processing units, which requires understanding how they dissipate energy to process information. It turns out that a project in my lab had a very natural extension towards understanding energy dissipation, and I was able to put my interests to practical work in understanding biological experiments.

Danny
Danny Seara, Ph.D. student at Yale University

What are you passionate about outside of science?

My most recent obsession has been the impending water crisis that many cities around the world will soon face (the Vox Netflix show “Explained” has an episode about this that I highly recommend if you want to scare your pants off). I’m also interested in the intersection between science and law (this might be cheating out of the question), and in particular have begun researching how the idea of “universal laws” play a role in science, law, and in the dialogue that the two try to have on the issues mentioned above. I also play guitar and love hip-hop music.

Why did you choose to write for Softbites?

I did my undergraduate degree in the history and philosophy of science, so I spent a lot of my time writing. In grad school, there’s less opportunity for non-scientific writing and I wanted to exercise those muscles again. I care a lot about science communication and believe in the mission of Softbites to educate people on the ubiquitous yet often overlooked science of soft matter (which encompasses biological matter). It’s a fascinating subject I want to help popularize, and I like doing the work that goes into that popularization.

 

Meet our authors (1): Olga

Softbites team introduces its official authors. Find here the first post of our series of interviews. You can read Olga’s posts here.

Who are you and what is your research focus?

I’m a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech studying the biomechanics of maggots – specifically, black soldier fly larvae. These larvae eat twice their body weight per day in food waste. They are raised by startups all over the world as a source of sustainable chicken and fish feed. I study how these larvae eat so much, the physics of their interactions with each other and their environment, and how to better raise them in industry.

black soldier fly larva
Here is an up-close picture of a black soldier fly larva.

Why do you think the science you do is important?

This research is important for two reasons. First, it will help find methods for startups to raise larvae better, so that they can be a sustainable and economically feasible source of protein. Second, this project is an example of “active matter” — how groups of self-propelled particles interact with each other and move in interesting ways. The collective motion of fly larvae, bacteria, and birds in flocks have a lot in common, and I am investigating the physics that leads to that.

When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist and what were the crucial steps that took you to your current project?

I’ve been interested in science all my life. I went to college for engineering but quickly realized that I love discovering how the world works even more than designing new technology. When I realized I could use my engineering skills to understand how animals move, I knew I was on the right track.

Olga
Olga Shishkov, Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech

What are you passionate about outside of science?

When I started my Ph.D., I also started doing aerial silks.  This hobby is both great exercise and a fun distraction. I can’t worry about a paper or exam while hanging on to a piece of fabric by one hand upside down 15 feet in the air!

Why did you choose to write for Softbites?

I have really bad science FOMO. Whenever I read about an exciting new study, I wish I was working on what I just read about. However, I can’t just abandon the work I’m doing on my maggots! Writing about the papers I enjoy reading lets me explore them enough to get back to my work. I also really enjoy writing, and as a Softbites writer, I can write with a more fun style than in an academic paper. Finally, it’s important to communicate science to the public, and soft matter needs more attention from the science communication community.

The Lutetium Project: combining research, arts and outreach on YouTube

What does a physicist study? If you ask this question to the general public, you’re likely to hear back either about the extremely small—quantum physics, particle physics—or the extremely large—general relativity or cosmology. Indeed, those are probably the most visible fields of physics, having been depicted in Hollywood movies and TV series, and being prominently featured on the cover of popular science books and magazines.

Picture1
Desperately looking for soft matter in the Map of Physics, from youtu.be/ZihywtixUYo

At the Lutetium Project, we want to show that this is not all there is to physics. We believe that one field, in particular, is more relatable to our everyday experiences, as long as we pay attention to its beauty and its complexity. Soft matter physics is the study of systems that can easily be deformed at our time- and length-scales, of objects that cannot easily be classified as solids or liquids. Research in soft matter physics is often pursued at the intersection with other fields, such as fluid dynamics, biology, chemistry or statistical physics. For example, soft matter physicists try to answer questions like: Why do foams change over time, and how can we make them more stable? Why does toothpaste behave like a liquid when squeezed out from a tube and like a solid when left alone? Why do biological tissues grow differently on rough versus smooth surfaces? Can we learn the general principles that guide the collective behaviour of flocks of birds or of schools of fish? And many more keep popping up every day!

 

Picture2
Physics Confession, by xkcd.

 

Soft matter physics is well-suited to video: one needs only an optical microscope to see the movement of defects in liquid crystals, or a high-speed camera to record the bounce of water droplets on a hydrophobic surface. As a group of Ph.D. students, we have this kind of equipment in our labs, and we know how to use it. This is why we decided to launch a YouTube channel primarily showcasing high-quality footage of our experiments.

 

Picture3
Defects in liquid crystals under the polarized microscope, Guillaume Durey for the Lutetium Project.

 

We teamed up with talented art students, who developed a visual identity for the project, composed original soundtracks for the videos, and coordinated all the cinema-related aspects of the channel, in order to produce three categories of videos. In the first category, we explain scientific concepts from our studio, such as microfluidics and granular matter, using motion design and footage from the labs. In the second one, we interview our colleagues, whether young scientists or project leaders, about their current experiments. In the third one, we immerse the viewer in one single research experiment, which we explain using short pieces of text. We set these videos to an original soundtrack whose melody reflects the physics of the experiment. This last series is our most successful to date: we were thrilled to be awarded a prize from the American Physical Society for one of these videos, featuring bursting droplets!

After four years of hard work, we have set up a YouTube channel that relies equally on current experimental research, artistic creation, and scientific outreach. Its name is a callback to lutetium, a chemical element named after Paris, a city that pioneered the study of soft matter physics. We hope that our videos will stir your imagination; if that sounds appealing to you, you can follow us at youtube.com/thelutetiumproject, or @TheLuProject on Twitter: we’d be delighted to have you!

Thanks to our friends at Softbites for giving us this opportunity to present our project, and thanks to our funders (ESPGG, Université PSL, ESPCI Paris, ESPCI Alumni, Fonds ESPCI Paris) for making it possible.

The Lutetium Project team

 

SOFI CDT: a Ph.D. opportunity in soft matter in the UK

SOFI CDT

SOFI CDT (more formally known as the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Soft Matter and Functional Interfaces) is a doctoral training program based across three UK universities: Durham, Leeds and Edinburgh. SOFI is a broad and interdisciplinary program, recruiting up to 16 students per year from a variety of academic backgrounds including physics, chemistry, food science, maths and engineering. Academically, SOFI has a strong focus on soft matter science but offers its students a broader learning experience by incorporating training activities based on developing skills in business, enterprise, media and communications throughout the duration of the Ph.D. Each student also has the opportunity to spend time studying abroad.

Unlike the traditional Ph.D. process in the UK, SOFI students are not allocated individual Ph.D. projects on acceptance to the program; instead, they choose from a pool of projects after completing an initial six month training period. This training involves a series of mini group projects based around problem solving, presentation skills and understanding the fundamentals of soft matter science. The topics covered are so diverse (everything from liquid crystals to ice cream and polymer processing) that often when it comes to picking projects students end up opting for something they may not have even considered previously. The cohorts are based in Durham for most of this initial training period but also spend several weeks studying in Leeds and Edinburgh. This offers students a taste of life and research at each of the three universities before they decide where to complete their Ph.D.

One of SOFI’s key aims is to prepare its students for careers in industry as well as academia. The program has a large number of industrial partners supporting both the initial training period and individual research projects taken on by the students. The industrial involvement in the training is very hands on and involves lectures and projects coordinated by industrial partners as well as site visits. This provides fantastic networking opportunities for students, academics and industrial representatives alike. Each year the entire CDT is reunited at SOFI’s own conference, the UK Soft Matter Showcase. This event includes talks from some of the world’s top soft matter scientists, gives students the chance to present their work and also features a day of industry-led discussion which helps initiate future collaborations.

All of the opportunities afforded to students by SOFI are fantastic but one of the most valuable outcomes of the program is that the cohort based training system provides a unique network for peer-based academic and moral support. The close working relationships that students develop in the group training means that they are able to utilise each other’s individual knowledge and technical expertise to help solve research problems throughout the duration of their projects, making the most of the interdisciplinary nature of the program and soft matter science itself!

To find out more about SOFI please visit the website or check out the SOFI Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.

Vanessa J. Woodhouse