PoLS at Georgia Tech
This is the official Bluesky profile for the Physics of Living Systems node at Georgia Tech.
https://pols.gatech.edu
- Actively-driven #robots can produce a rich variety of emergent phenomena, including behaviors that appear counterintuitive at first. In a recent preprint from the Goldman Lab at @gtresearchnews.bsky.social, undulating robots form long-lived pairs mediated solely by repulsive interactions.
- The robots, dubbed "smarticles", are formed from three links and two motors, inspired by Purcell’s three-link swimmer. The motion of the arms causes the smarticles to repel one another, but they are unable to move significant distances on their own.
- When motion was initiated for seven densely-packed smarticles, it was expected that they would push each other away and expand to a relaxed state. Instead, 64% of trials formed long-lived pairs of robots, called "dyads", which moved together for more than 100 gait periods.
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View full threadPlease check out the full preprint on the arxiv! arxiv.org/abs/2504.14170 A big thanks to authors Akash Vardhan, Ram Avinery, Hosain Bagheri, Velin Kojohourav, Shengkai Li, Hridesh Kedia, Tianyu Wang, Daniel Soto, Kurt Wiesenfeld, and Dan Goldman for their great work!
- Reposted by PoLS at Georgia TechExcited to share our new work in @science.org #Robotics that shows how reversible kinks can help nematodes perform jumps 1000 times faster than you can blink! scim.ag/4iDIa1i 🧵: Work co-led by @chemicalsunnyraj.bsky.social , @itiwari93.bsky.social and Victor Ortega-Jimenez with many other colleagues
- Check out these birds, courtesy of Nami Ha! Nami and the @bhamlalab.bsky.social at Georgia Tech studies the amazing materials that make up living things, including the ultrafast water absorption of sandgrouse feathers.
- Today! Come see @sacrozhangt.bsky.social's talk!
- Please join us this Thursday for the final PoLS Lunch & Learn of the semester! This week's speaker will be @sacrozhangt.bsky.social from the Hammer and @wcratcliff.bsky.social labs.
- Today! Please come see Dr. Shucong Li give an excellent talk!
- Please join us this Thursday for the final PoLS Lunch & Learn of the semester! This week's speaker will be @sacrozhangt.bsky.social from the Hammer and @wcratcliff.bsky.social labs.
- The @bhamlalab.bsky.social is looking to hire a new lab manager! See the flyer below for details!
- Please join us today for another Lunch & Learn seminar! This week's speaker is Maryam Hejri from the Yunker Lab. Lunch will be served at 12:00, with a talk beginning at 12:30!
- Animals at many length scales move through undulation. In a new paper, Chris Pierce and the Goldman Lab use the nematode 🪱 C. elegans to show how interactions with the environment cause undulating body movements to become desynchronized to the phase of muscle contractions.
- Using calcium imaging, the Goldman Lab was able to measure the difference in phase between undulatory movements and the activation waves that cause them—called neuromechanical phase lags (NPLs). The NPLs vary with medium, including fluids of different viscosity and agar.
- In low viscosity media, these phase lags are evenly distributed across the body. In viscous buffer, or in agar, the phase lag grows along the body before dropping near the tail.
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View full threadTo learn more, please check out the full paper—now available in PRX Life! Congratulations to the authors Chris Pierce, Yang Ding, Lucinda Peng, Xuefei Lu, Baxi Chong, Hang Lu, and Dan Goldman. doi.org/10.1103/PRXL...
- Today! Come see Ben's talk!
- This week's Lunch & Learn speaker is @doshna.bsky.social from the Sponberg Lab! Please come see his talk tomorrow!
- This week's Lunch & Learn speaker is @doshna.bsky.social from the Sponberg Lab! Please come see his talk tomorrow!
- Today! Join us for a PoLS seminar featuring Dr. Abdul Malmi-Kakkada, an Assistant Professor of Physics at Augusta University! Dr. Malmi-Kakkada is a computational biophysicist with expertise in cell-cell signaling and cell-substrate mechanical interactions. We will begin at 3:00 in Howey N201!
- Please join us on April 15 for a PoLS seminar featuring Dr. Shucong Li! Dr. Li recently became an Assistant Professor at the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. She will be hosted by Dr. Zeb Rocklin.
- PoLS faculty Dan Goldman has been named a lifetime fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of #Science (@aaas.org)! Congratulations to Dan, and also to the six other @gtresearchnews.bsky.social honorees named this year!
- Dan has been recognized "for distinguished contributions to the field of biological physics and nonlinear dynamics at the interface of #biomechanics, #robotics, and granular #physics." Read more in the full press release! news.gatech.edu/news/2025/03...
- Today! Please come see Pablo's talk!
- Lunch & Learn is back this week! Please join us this Thursday for a talk from @pbravo.bsky.social from the Yunker Lab!
- Can wriggling #worms inspire new principles in robot design? A new preprint from the @bhamlalab.bsky.social, in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and @sorbonne-universite.fr, describes how active filaments—like living worms—can efficiently gather tiny particles in confined spaces.
- Their new preprint explores particle aggregation mediated by three kinds of active filaments: 🪱 Living tubifex worms in Petri dishes 💻 Simulated, actively driven filaments 🤖 Robotic filaments made from hexbug robots The result: flexibility is key
- Longer, more flexible filaments are more effective at aggregating small particles. Motion is also essential—filaments use an "active swiping" behavior to gather these particles together. The width of this swiping motion is the key parameter that governs clustering.
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View full threadCheck out the full preprint, now posted to the arXiv! Thanks to authors R. Sinaasappel, @prathyushakr.bsky.social, Harry Tuazon, E. Mirzahossein, P. Illien, @bhamlalab.bsky.social, and A. Deblais for their wonderful work! doi.org/10.48550/arX...
- Lunch & Learn is back this week! Please join us this Thursday for a talk from @pbravo.bsky.social from the Yunker Lab!
- Congratulations to the whole PoLS community on another successful @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Physics Summit! We look forward to seeing all of you again in Denver next year!
- Just a reminder, PoLS folks—there will be no Lunch & Learn meeting today! We will see all of you again next week on the 27th!
- I hope the PoLS community is enjoying the @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Summit! For those of you who signed up, please remember that we have a PoLS meetup dinner tonight at 6:00!
- This year's @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Summit is well underway in lovely Anaheim, California! Our illustrious Dan Goldman was invited to give the opening talk at this morning's Robophysics session: A Decade of Robophysics at the APS March Meeting!
- Today! Come see Aradhya's talk!
- Please join us tomorrow for another PoLS Lunch & Learn! This week's speaker is Aradhya Rajanala from the Goldman Lab!
- The application deadline for this wonderful (fully funded!) opportunity is this Saturday! Please apply now for a chance to study the amazing biodiversity of the #Amazon!
- Applications are open for the Jungle Biomechanics Lab—a fully funded program at Finca Las Piedras in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, from August 3-17. Undergrads, grads, and postdocs should visit the @bhamlalab.bsky.social website for more information! bhamla.gatech.edu/project-blog...
- It's #Biomechanics Day at @zooatl.bsky.social! GT PoLS is always happy to reach out to the community. A big thanks to Tianyu Wang and all of the other students who helped make today happen!
- How does the complex environment of #cell membranes affect transport into and out of the cell? PoLS Faculty JC Gumbart is out with a new collaboration, combining MD simulations with magic-angle spinning NMR to probe this challenging subject!
- Check out the full paper, now in @pubs.acs.org! Congratulations to the authors Jayasubba Reddy Yarava, Marcella Orwick-Rydmark, David Ryoo, Albert Hofstetter, James C. Gumbart, Michael Habeck, Barth-Jan van Rossum, Dirk Linke, and Hartmut Oschkinat! doi.org/10.1021/jacs...
- Today! Come see Evan's talk!
- How do #cancer cells invade healthy tissues? PoLS faculty @shilabanerjee.bsky.social uses advanced simulations to study competition between healthy cells (green) and growing cancers (magenta).
- Please read more about this important work in Dr. Banerjee's recent #preprint with Logan Carpenter! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Please join us this Thursday for another Lunch & Learn! This week's speaker is Evan Rheaume from the Fenton Lab. Please note that we're in the Interaction Zone on the first floor this week!
- How do #fish navigate while swimming, and how does the underwater environment shape their locomotion? Come see Dr. James Liao at tomorrow's Faculty Search Seminar to find out! 🐟🌊
- Applications are open for the Jungle Biomechanics Lab—a fully funded program at Finca Las Piedras in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, from August 3-17. Undergrads, grads, and postdocs should visit the @bhamlalab.bsky.social website for more information! bhamla.gatech.edu/project-blog...
- Today! Come see Yaqing's talk!
- The Harold Kim Lab studies #DNA molecules 🧬 far too small to be resolved with an optical microscope. Here, Tony Lemos uses atomic force #microscopy to image tiny DNA minicircles as they bind to individual proteins!
- Please join us this Thursday for another Lunch & Learn seminar! This week's speaker is Yaqing Wang from the Sponberg Lab.
- Flavio Fenton's CHAOS Lab maps the dynamics of action potential propagation in the #heart using fluorescent dyes. This is Braden Starver, a physics major at Morehouse. During an REU summer program with Dr. Fenton, Braden developed an affordable microcontroller device to initiate cardiac arrhythmia!
