Ms. Samantha Lish

I am a current NIH-Oxford Cambridge Scholar in Condensed Matter Theory. The goal of my studies is to investigate breaks of symmetry that emerge from epithelial self-assembly, by identifying mechanical and geometric biomarkers governing these non-linear interactions. Biological processes including tissue shaping during morphogenesis, repair during wound healing, and metastases during cancer invasion, involve cells that move as a collective rather than as single bodies. However, the mechanism by which growth is coordinated on larger scales remains unknown, because disentangling non-linear single cell dynamics in phase space from aggregates remains a challenge. At the single particle level, soft active matter transforms surrounding energy into mechanical work. Non-equilibrium thermodynamic states arise in many-body particle systems due to dissipation of energy and pressure gradients, which plays a significant role in sustaining physiologic conditions that support life.