Our group explores how complex, many-body systems—ranging from living tissues to driven soft matter—organize, flow, and change shape across different dimensions. A central theme of our work is to connect cell-scale processes, such as division, motility, shape change, and rearrangements, to tissue-scale mechanics, and to ask whether the physical principles emerging in living matter also apply to non-living systems, including active glasses, foams, and liquid-crystalline materials.

A key tool in our group is the Graph Vertex Model (GVM), a computational framework developed to simulate three-dimensional cell aggregates. Using this approach, we study questions such as: When does a tissue behave like an elastic solid, and when does it flow like a fluid? How do mechanical interactions among constituent cells and the surrounding microenvironment influence tumor growth and invasion? Wherever possible, we aim to support numerical findings with simple, physically transparent theoretical descriptions that help clarify underlying mechanisms and identify minimal control parameters.

More broadly, we enjoy developing minimal, physically grounded models that bridge length scales. Our group's interests extend beyond biological tissues to include lipid–cholesterol membranes and their multiscale organization, as well as polycrystalline materials under external driving and other soft-matter systems with rich spatial structure.