The second annual Pittsburgh Biological Physics Day was held on Sept. 16 at the Mellon Insitute. This event showcased vibrant research in the Pittsburgh area that merged principles of physics and biology.
This year’s workshop was sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Department of Computational and Systems Biology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the Carnegie Mellon University Department of Physics. Pittsburgh Biological Physics Day aims to foster collaboration between local universities and researchers.
During this one-day workshop, speakers from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton University delivered talks on a diverse range of topics in biological physics. In addition, Yuhai Tu of the Flatiron Institute delivered the keynote lecture on nonequilibrium thermodynamics in living systems, which included their latest work on the bacterial flagellar motor.
Maryam Kohram, who will be starting her own lab at Georgetown University in January, was this year’s graduate guest speaker. Kohram, who earned her PhD in physics from Pitt and is completing postdoctoral research at Princeton University, presented research that uses a microfluidic model to study how dietary perturbations affect cancer cells’ invasiveness.
After the talks, students and postdoctoral fellows shared their work in lightning talks and poster sessions.
Maria Rose, a PhD candidate in Pitt’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, enjoyed connecting with other students during the workshop. “This is a once-a-year opportunity to meet people who share similar research interests,” she said.
Vismaya Walawalkar, a PhD candidate in the CMU College of Engineering, was inspired by the talks. “I absolutely loved it. I’m an engineering student, and I was checking out the presentations,” she said. “I like how they are merging theoretical work with empirical work. I got some ideas for what I can bring to my own investigation.”
Organizers hope the event will continue to grow and spark greater collaboration within the biophysics community.
“As an emerging multidisciplinary field, biological physics addresses fundamental questions about living systems,” said Fangwei Si, assistant professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon and co-organizer of the event. “The workshop serves as a great catalyst for the interactions within our Pittsburgh biophysics community and as a promoter for its future growth.”
Read more about Pittsburgh Biological Physics Day here.