Physics Colloquium: “The ‘Biological Software’ of Soft Matter”

The Syracuse University Physics Department is pleased to welcome Dr. José Alvarado, Assistant Professor, University of Texas, Austin.

José Alvarado is an assistant professor in Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Master’s in Physics at the Universiy of Leipzig in Germany in 2008, and his PhD in Physics from the VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 2013. He went on to do a postdoc in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, before starting his lab at UT in 2019. The Alvarado lab explores the interface between biological “hardware and software” by studying experimental model systems that are inspired by cellular and organismal mechanics.

“The ‘biological software’ of soft matter”

Life is primarily made of soft matter. This class of extraordinary materials allows top athletes to execute a fascinatingly wide range of mechanical feats that we scientists and engineers struggle to replicate. Even more difficult to mimic are the micron-scale acrobatics cells perform in order to function properly. What makes biological soft matter so special? Active systems consume chemical energy (often via ATPase) and, owing to their soft properties, readily self-deform and permit an expressive range of mechanical behaviors. Furthermore, animals and cells are also subject to neuronal and cell-signaling “circuitry”. How does this “biological software” interplay with the mechanics of biological soft matter? In this talk, I’ll demonstrate three examples of biologically inspired systems from our lab that explore the software-soft matter interface: depletion-induced bundling of actin filaments, pulsatile activation of actomyosin active gels, and muscle-like forces in a weight-lifting robot. All of these examples not only aim to understand the thermodynamic, non-equilibrium meta-stability of life. We also leverage these systems and develop designs for novel technologies.