Liquid crystals (LCs) are ubiquitous in display technologies. The orientational ordering in the
nematic phase of LCs gives rise to structural anisotropy, the ability to form topological …

Cell monolayers are a central model system in the study of tissue biophysics. In vivo,
epithelial tissues are curved on the scale of microns, and the curvature's role in the onset of …

Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale
morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to …

Coordinated cellular movements are key processes in tissue morphogenesis. Using a cell-
based modeling approach we study the dynamics of epithelial layers lining surfaces with …

We derive and numerically solve a surface active nematodynamics model. We validate the
numerical approach on a sphere and analyse the influence of hydrodynamics on the …

A nematic liquid crystal confined to the surface of a sphere exhibits topological defects of
total charge+ 2 due to the topological constraint. In equilibrium, the nematic field forms four+ …

We show that confining extensile nematics in three-dimensional (3D) channels leads to the
emergence of two self-organized flow states with nonzero helicity. The first is a pair of …

A hallmark of biological cells is their ability to proliferate and of tissues their ability to grow.
This is common in morphogenesis and embryogenesis, but also in pathological conditions …

We design new navigation strategies for travel time optimization of microscopic self-
propelled particles in complex and noisy environments. In contrast to strategies relying on …

The structure and dynamics of important biological quasi-two-dimensional systems, ranging
from cytoskeletal gels to tissues, are controlled by nematic order, defects and activity …