Suraj Shankar 🏳️‍🌈

Cracked, but still there: the glass ceiling persists for senior women in science To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, Mangala Srinivas reminds junior colleagues that career success won’t protect you from gender-based bias.

"...I have learnt that success does not overcome bias. Women are doubted until they overdeliver... the glass ceiling remains. Cracked it might be, but it still holds..." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Delighted this paper is out! Soft solids fracture in complex ways. Can we control it using structure and activity? Yes, using defects that localize energy injection for targeted failure! Amazing work combining exp, theory & ML by Sheng Chen and collab with Murrell lab (Yale).

Break It To Make It: How Fracturing Sculpts Tissues and Organs | Quanta Magazine Growing tissues can crack, break, and dissociate to form structures that can later withstand immense forces.

Sometimes, the only way to build back up is to let everything fall apart. This is certainly true at the cellular level. www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨

Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!)

Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇

doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Tissue phase transitions in development: more than just mechanics Summary: Tissue material phase transitions are classically thought to regulate tissue deformability. This Review emphasises their unexpected roles in directly influencing growth and patterning signall...

Excited to share our new review in @dev-journal.bsky.social on tissue phase transitions during development!

@karengrace12.bsky.social @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social

🔗 doi.org/10.1242/dev....

New from us in @pnas.org :
We considered the limits of condensate diversity, and engineered DNA droplets to form 9 distinct, homotypic, coexisting phases. Very hard to do this except with nucleic acids. Probably you can make more than 9. (1/3)

Break to build: fracture as a unifying morphogenetic strategy Summary: This Review presents mechanical fracture as a unifying morphogenetic strategy and describes how developmental systems actively exploit mechanical fracture to drive morphogenesis, reproduction...

Our latest with @torres-sanchez.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article-...
Breaking isn’t always a bad thing! Think of birth, seed release...
We highlight how living tissue not only tolerates fractures but actively fracture to grow, shape, reproduce, or adapt – across species and scales.

Permeability-driven pressure and cell proliferation control lumen morphogenesis in pancreatic organoids - Nature Cell Biology Using pancreatic organoids, Lee et al. show that the balance between epithelial tissue permeability-driven lumenal pressure and cell proliferation affects ductal morphogenesis.

☕Using #pancreatic #organoids, Lee et al. show that the balance between epithelial tissue permeability-driven lumenal pressure and cell proliferation affects ductal morphogenesis.
bit.ly/4qozmjG

We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing Civilians have had apparent seizures. One had his eyes roll back. Another had ribs broken. “I felt like I was going to p

Arnoldo Bazan, a 16-year-old U.S. citizen, was put in a chokehold by ICE agents.

Agents took his phone, which he tracked to a used electronics vending machine near an ICE detention center.

Yes: ICE is stealing and selling people’s things after brutalizing them. There are no words.

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Engineering the development of the pancreas Researchers found that the shape of the fluid-filled cavities in the developing pancreas is controlled by pressure and the rate cells divide.

With Byung Ho Lee and Kana Fuji as first/lead authors, @anne-grapin.bsky.social group, @utokyoofficial.bsky.social, Inst. of Physics of Academia Sinica, & @igbmc.bsky.social found the shape of lumens in the developing pancreas is controlled by pressure & proliferation. www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...

Are you a junior scientist working in theoretical biophysics? @zamakany.bsky.social and I are organizing another workshop this fall here at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social. Travel and the workshop expenses are all covered!

tinyurl.com/yc66fawc

Excited to share Alison's @alisonkickuth.bsky.social paper from the lab out in @nature.com this week! We uncovered how a mechanical ratchet mechanism drives cytokinesis in early #zebrafish embryos. Read more in this thread 🧵 and at www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩
@poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

Summer program for workshops at the Aspen Center for Physics

With @tzerhan29.bsky.social, @jasnir.bsky.social and Asja Radja, we are thrilled to organize an Aspen summer workshop (Aug 9-Sept 6) on the "Physics of Collective Function in Active Living Matter". Applications are open at aspenphys.org/event/physic... till Jan 15!!
Please share and apply soon!

I am beyond excited to announce that the Bisson Lab has a new home!!! Starting January 2026, I will join the Biology Department at Indiana University Bloomington as Associate Professor with tenure.

I am actively recruiting scientists across all levels. More in our website: bissonlab.com/join

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Katherine was a fantastic editor and writer. I got to know her when I was a graduate student, and she was always so supportive and encouraging of younger scientists. A shocking loss, she will be sorely missed.

🚨 POSTDOC OPENING 🚨
NIH-funded Bio-Fluid Mechanics Postdoc in my lab @univmiami.bsky.social
Hofstenia miamia | cilia-driven flows | behavior & neuroscience
Collab w/ Mansi Srivastava @harvard.edu
🕒 Start: Jan–Feb 2026
⏳ 1 yr, renewable | Email me ASAP!
#Postdoc #Biophysics #FluidDynamics

The published version is out in PRL! doi.org/10.1103/19rh... with a nice writeup from UM - news.umich.edu/to-get-lifel...

The lab’s first pre-print! We investigated how growth-inducing Erk activity waves are regulated in regenerating zebrafish scales. We discovered that Erk waves are followed by waves of expression of their own inhibitors, as predicted by excitable waves theory. tinyurl.com/26r2cmpj

Geometry, Mechanics and the Physics of Growth - 2025 - YouTube Program Geometry, Mechanics and the Physics of Growth ORGANIZERS: Joel Marthelot (Aix-Marseille University, France), S Ganga Prasath (IIT Madras, India) and ...

For those who want to follow the lectures online, they are recorded and uploaded on YouTube - youtube.com/playlist?lis...

🙊

Workshop poster

Excited to be at ICTS for the school on Geometry, Mechanics and the Physics of Growth, co-organized with Ganga Prasath (IITM) and @joelmarthelot.bsky.social (Aix-Marseille)! Fantastic start with a lecture on continuum elasticity by @abigailplummer.bsky.social (BU)

Had the pleasure of working with @mohannad-dardiry.bsky.social to rethink what it means to develop for life. Many thanks to @dev-journal.bsky.social! @embl.org #LifelongDevSI

Host-mediated niche construction of bacterial communities in an aquatic microecosystem Abstract. Microbes coordinate homeostasis in host-associated and environmental ecosystems alike, but the connectivity of these biomes is seldom considered.

Excited to share our new paper out in @isme-microbes.bsky.social. We asked if environmental microbial communities can be adaptively modulated by host species that transiently acquire their symbionts from the environment #SymbioSky #MicrobiomeSky
doi.org/10.1093/isme...

📣 New preprint! Stoked to share a fantastic collaboration with @campaslab.bsky.social!

We discover a unique mammalian mechanism for body axis elongation using mouse and human gastruloids, and confirm central findings in mouse embryos.

Check out the 🧵 👇

@mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social

Preprint 🚨! B cells form localized patterns in the immune synapse when mature, allowing improved affinity discrimination. How? We suggest a new mechanism using dynamic active forces and feedback! Read more @ arxiv.org/abs/2510.18771. Great colab with Shenshen Wang, Tom Chou and Tony Wong (UCLA).

“Cellular Olympics” our catalog of freeky ultra fast cellular superhero’s is freely available “Ann Rev of microbiology”

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

This is a compilation of world’s fastest single cell organisms - enjoy this buffet of rare delightful protists with mind bending speeds. 🧪

Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.

🚨🚨🚨

And THREE stood up!

Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact.

When we join together and fight back, WE WIN!

No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent.

LET’S GO!

#DefendHigherEd
@aaup-penn.bsky.social

MCDB Opens Search for Faculty | U-M LSA Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) MCDB welcomes applications at the Assistant Professor level from outstanding biological scientists in all areas of physiology and neuroscience, spanning molecular, cellular, systems, and organismal le...

MCDB Assistant Professor Faculty Search. Please Repost!

Applications Due Oct 15th (TOMORROW!)

We welcome applications from all areas of physiology and neuroscience - spanning molecular, cellular, systems, and organismal levels.

More information can be found HERE:
lsa.umich.edu/mcdb/news-ev...

Headline from an article in Nature this week that states "Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery. The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality."

Lol the Nobels can't even acknowledge women's contribution to discovery. But sure let's acknowledge The Machines.