[staff-physics-and-astronomy-HL-UHD-UD] IoP Colloquium on May with Nikta Fakhri (MIT)

[Beta NAT Secretariaat]

Dear all,

For this month’s IoP Colloquium, we will host Nikta Fakhri from MIT. The topic of her talk will be Broken Symmetries in Living Matter.

Please join for this interesting talk, all are welcome!

Date and time: Thursday May 22, 16:00 – 17:00 + drinks!
Location: L1.02 (Lab 42)

Broken Symmetries in Living Matter
Active processes in living systems give rise to a unique class of nonequilibrium matter, composed of interacting components that continuously consume energy to generate motion and mechanical stress. In this talk, I will present a suite of experimental techniques and theoretical frameworks we have developed to uncover the fundamental principles governing fluctuations, emergent order, and self-organization in these dynamic systems. I will focus particularly on systems in which individual constituents break time-reversal symmetry—revealing how this microscopic asymmetry drives behaviors across scales. From the thermodynamic arrow of time to the self-organization of signaling protein patterns and the emergence of odd elasticity, these frameworks reveal how broken symmetries shape the complexity and functionality of living matter.


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