Jena JSMC offers several positions - PhD in assembly, function and stability of polymicrobial biofilm communities (experimental) - Potsdoc in mathematical modelling of the gut-liver-lung axis as a network of tipping elements (theory) in the Allen group jsmc-phd.de/admission/vacant…

Our paper is out in Nature Physics🎉 We uncovered how mouse epiblast cells acquire orientational order guided by tissue boundaries, combining 3D quantitative imaging with theory. A wonderful collaboration with @ErzbergerGroup and @pguruciaga at @embl! nature.com/articles/s41567-0…

This study reveals counterintuitive features of collective patterning, including that globally optimized solutions do not necessarily maximize intercellular information transfer and that individual cells may appear suboptimal in isolation. go.aps.org/3ZBt3hP

Using phototaxis to control cell orientation, various instabilities can be induced in jets of motile microalgae #Biophysics #CoolVideo go.aps.org/43WsykF

📢 The full programme for the 2nd Workshop on Biological Control Systems (WBCS 2025) is out! 🗓️ 19 Nov 2025 | Online across time zones 🔗 Programme & info: biocontrolseminars.org/works…

🚨 Next Friday 24/10 15:30 EU, Dani Rodríguez Amor (École Normale Supérieure - Paris Sciences et Lettres) will present the talk Cooperation-driven multistability in synthetic microbial communities at the Population Dynamics Seminars. Subscription sites.google.com/view/popdyn…

Imposing shear flow on a cell layer induces an ordering transition. Now it is shown that an intermediate phase of ordering occurs driven by an interplay between cellular activity and the aligning field. nature.com/articles/s41567-0…

A PhD position within the @spp2389 is available in my lab to work on: Emergence and self-organisation of bacterial metabolism in consortia of cross-feeding bacteria. Please RT Deadline: 12.11.25 More infos 👇 shorturl.at/rAKAT

Life moves forward — never backward. Living systems consume energy, breaking time’s symmetry and staying far from equilibrium. That’s the hidden physics behind every heartbeat, every cell in motion, every act of becoming. @TEDxNewEngland youtube.com/watch?v=AZ1Nyl7V…

Chemotactic cells working together balance sensing and signal modulation, showing how shared information speeds and stabilizes collective search for targets. Read more: go.aps.org/46RIIhh

Attention colleagues! Interested in an interdisciplinary #PhD? 🧬 Apply now for a position exploring biomolecular #condensates! This program involves several PoL PIs, bridging the gap between physics and biology. Apply here: dresdencondensates.org/join-… 🗓Deadline: 24. October

🚨 TLM Online Seminar Series - 08.10.25 | 16:00 UK Pablo Sáez: "Decision-making during cell migration" Please repost & to attend online please register to our 📧for the zoom link: lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/subscr…

Pls RT this ad: I have an opening for a PhD student in my @IntBioPhysics group to begin ASAP , part of a collaboration with the group of Ilya Nemenman @INemenman at Emory university. Deadline: 1st November Details here: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobp… and application portal here: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/j… We are seeking a doctoral student with a quantitative background. Ideally, the candidate should have a master degree in physics but other quantitative backgrounds will be considered. The researcher will be based in the Integrative Biophysics group at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, located in Konstanz, Germany. The project summary is as follows: Project Title: Inferring dynamical interactions in social groups Project Abstract: Social interactions are one of the most foundational building blocks of group behaviors, shaping decision making strategies across ecologies. Social groups consist of small number of individuals in contrast with collectives that consist of large number of agents. Despite the importance of social groups as a building block of living systems, there is little understanding of mechanistic details of the nature of those social interactions and how they shape emergent social functional properties. This stands in contrast with physics of collectives, which usually focus on the dynamics of very large group of individuals and have been thoroughly studied. In an experimental system or in field observations tackling social behaviors, we do not know a priori the social forces, nature of those interactions and their dynamics. Recent advances in software and hardware allow us to track the behavior of multiple individuals over extended spatio-temporal scales. Thus it is crucial to develop methodologies to infer dynamical social interactions and social forces from experimental observations. This relates closely to work done inferring "social forces" from dusty plasmas. Recent theoretical work has developed an information theoretic approach to estimate intrinsic motivation, based on maximizing an agent's empowerment (defined as the mutual information between its past actions and future states). This approach can be used to study social behaviours, where individuals choose actions without an explicit reward signal. In this project, we are planning to apply this framework to infer and understand social behaviour of small animal groups specifically locusts, mice and marmosets monkeys offering not only a mechanistic insights into mechanisms of social organization but also make quantitative evolutionary comparison of social behaviours. 1. Yu, Wentao, Eslam Abdelaleem, Ilya Nemenman, and Justin C. Burton. "Physics-tailored machine learning re-veals unexpected physics in dusty plasmas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 31 (2025): e2505725122. 2. Tiomkin, Stas, Ilya Nemenman, Daniel Polani, and Naftali Tishby. "Intrinsic motivation in dynamical control sys-tems.” PRX Life 2, no. 3 (2024): 033009.

On the cover of our latest issue is our first Review. It revisits how physical forces drive collective #AnimalBehavior, showing how individual-environment coupling shapes group dynamics across species — from fish schools to ant rafts. 🐟 🐜 🔗 go.aps.org/4lUbDGv

More on collective behavior: Our new Annual Review of Biophysics piece - with the stellar Danielle Chase - explores how animals sense, share information, and make group decisions. In honeybees and beyond 🐝 annualreviews.org/content/jo…

Hiring! the Theoretical Microbial Ecology group of Rosalind Allen (FSU Jena) is looking for a Doctoral or Postdoctoral Researcher to develop mathematical models of microbial communities exposed to environmental disturbances Apply jobs.uni-jena.de/jobposting/… Deadline: 31.10.2025

📢📢Hiring 2 Research Assistants & 2 Postdocs at @EmoryUniversity in Atlanta to study cytoskeletal biophysics/biochemistry. Please RT. RAs: great for recent bachelor's/master's in Physics/Bio/Chem/Biochem. Email CV and interests to shekhar@emory.edu. shekharlab.org

Microbial Communities enthusiasts, don't miss this conference in Chicago (27/09) Microbial Communities: Energetics and Dynamics Across Space and Time with focus on the energetics and spatio-temporal dynamics of microbial communities! Deadline 11/07 nitmb.org/microbial-communit…

🥳Our review on #Swarming Intelligence in #nanomotors, idea conceived years ago, the basis of my @ERC_Research CoG (i-Nanoswarms), is now published in @NatRevMater nature.com/articles/s41578-0… Great collaboration with @ayusmansen @ahortelao @ShuqinChen5 @tania_patino_

✨ Deadline extended! There’s still time to apply: September Science Academy - international summer school for women in the molecular life sciences. Deadline: July 14, 📍 Marburg, Germany mpi-marburg.mpg.de/1489492/S… #WomenInSTEM #SummerSchool mpi-marburg.mpg.de/1489492/S…