L. Mahadevan
Professor of
Organismic and
Evolutionary
Biology
Lola England
de Valpine Professor
of Applied Mathematics
(SEAS)
Phone:
617-496-9599
Office: Pierce
Hall, 29 Oxford
Street
E-mail:
Website: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/softmat/
Research Interests
Biological -
Our interests
in biology are
recent, and
as a consequence
somewhat desultory.
A basic question
is to understand "how
things work" which
leads naturally
to physiology.
We believe that
a practical
approach requires
a comparative
study of extremes
in biology and
offers many
beautiful examples
of the interconversion
of matter, energy
and information
in non-equilibrium
systems. Much
recent activity
in the field
focuses on information:
however, our
own interests
are at one natural
interface between
physical and
biological systems
that arises
in the context
of collective
biophysical
and biomechanical
behavior over
a range of scales,
from O(nm) to
a O(cm). Almost
all our work
in biology involves
both theory
and experiments,
with the latter
done both in
our own lab
and elsewhere
through close
collaboration.
Physical - The behavior of matter at the mesoscopic/macroscopic scale is a theme of central interest, particularly in understanding how matter is shaped and how it flows. This leads naturally to questions of the organization and self-organization of matter in space and time as manifest in the rich range of patterns that surround us, from the ripples seen on the surface of a moving liquid to the dynamics of drapery, from the settling of yogurt under its weight to the cracking of drying mud, from the mechanics of plate subduction to the flow of sand on a beach. We use a combination of experiential, experimental, analytical and computational approaches to study these sometimes frivolous and sometimes serious (the difference is often not clear a priori !) questions with the aim (although it is only rarely realized!) of stripping the complexity of the underlying phenomenon to its minimal essence. Indeed a goal is thus get at a qualitative understanding using quantitative methods.
