I am interested in…

What are you working on?

I am mainly working on active liquid crystal models and apply them to biological systems, trying to better understand the dynamics of cells and tissues. The general idea is to model cells as liquid crystal particles (basically small rods) and allow each of these particles to move around and exert forces on their environment. This results in hydrodynamic equations that can be applied to and solved in different circumstances. For example to understand tissue growth, morphogenesis, structure formation in tissues, or cell apoptosis better.

What are you looking to get out of the DRSTP?

Apart from the regular schools it is a nice environment to get to know PhD students from other universities and learn what they are working on, to get inspiration for my own work or just to see what’s out there, especially in fields that are far away from my own.

What interests do you have apart from your research?

I do sports like skating or bouldering, read books (at the moment mainly centered around politics or political philosophy and art), go to museums and listen to many podcasts about similar topics.