Professor: Carl Franck
Project Description: You will be joining our effort to quantify collective behavior and information flow in living matter. Our approach is that of physicists trying to understand living matter so well that it would please a telecommunications engineer. We have been devoted to understanding the manner in which single cells can work together and why this benefits their communities. Our current efforts are aimed at understanding the transition from slow to fast proliferation with time in a closed volume suspension of amoebae and also on substrates. We also measure and try to understand how well such organisms sense chemical signals. We have begun to explore a remarkable new phenomena: spontaneous cellcycle synchronization. Finally we enjoy building new instruments and employing computational tools, often aimed at digital microscopy data. A background in science (biology, physics or chemistry) or engineering or mathematics is desirable.