Curriculum Vitae

Remodeling of the Airway Smooth Muscle Cell:  To test the hypothesis that smooth muscle remodeling and the rate at which it progresses conform to the framework of trapping of molecules or molecular groups in deep energy wells and hopping out of those wells driven by agitation that may be of non-thermal origin.

Physical Determinants of Lung Function:  A program project to elucidate the physical determinants of lung function.

Bioengineering Research Partnership:  Micromechanics of Airway Smooth Muscle Cells in Culture.  To develop a micromechanical technology to measure the rheological properties of adherent living airway smooth muscle cells in culture. 

Bioengineering Research Partnership:  Traction Force Microscopy: Development of Enabling Technologies.  To develop technologies to measure the abilities of the cell to deform, contract, and remodel -- three functions that are essentially mechanical but without which it would be incapable of performing its biological functions.

Training in Interdisciplinary Pulmonary Sciences.  To train scientists with backgrounds in biology, medicine, engineering, and physics to work side-by-side on problems at the intersection of pulmonary sciences and environmental exposures.  

Therapeutic Ultrasound: Biophysical Mechanisms at the Molecular Level:  To elucidate the molecular basis of therapeutic ultrasound. 

Our laboratory seeks to discover physical laws governing the abilities of the cytoskeleton to deform, contract, and remodel. These basic mechanical processes underlie a range of higher level phenomena in health and disease including many aspects of cancer, cardiovascular disease, malaria, and morphogenesis, but our major research emphasis is the role of these processes in airway narrowing in asthma. Trainees with backgrounds in engineering sciences, cell biology, or physics of soft condensed matter learn how to work side-by-side to pose new questions, invent new nanotechnologies, apply these technologies in novel experimental investigations, and analyze resulting data in terms of evolving mechanistic understanding of the physical properties of the living cell.

 Journal covers featuring our work: 

BSME, 1968, Tufts University
Ph.D., 1973, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Physics in biology - Physics in biology: soft cells. Nature; Physics Portal, September, 2001.

A cellular glass menagerie - A cellular glass menagerie, Geoff Brumfiel, Physical Review Focus, American Physical Society, 24 September, 2001.  

Experiments Reveal How Cells Can Act Like Molten Glass - Experiments Reveal How Cells Can Act Like Molten Glass. Kristin Leutwyler, Scientific American.  2001

Clear as glass - Harvard Public Health Review. 2007

A stretch in the cells . Nature, 2007.  

Shape-shifting of Cells Gives Body Stretch . C. Humphries.  Focus. HMS, 2007

Softer side of cells. 2007

How growing cells move together.  CC Morton, Harvard Science Foundations, 2009.

Disorderly conduct. E Dougherty. HMS Focus, 2009