ICTS

Active Evolvable Matter
We study active evolvable matter - in addition to being mechanically active (energy flux), a key ingredient of such matter is its ability to sense, compute, adapt and evolve (information flux).

Clearly, this as a very broad definition - it certainly encompasses living matter but also applies to many other complex systems. In exploring how this description applies (quantitatively and qualitatively) to living and non-living matter, we hope to work towards a deep understanding of the living state. Along the way, we envision that our endeavors will lead to novel technology not only as a tool for our investigations, but also as an end in itself.

Both by the choice of the problems and the methods we use, our research is highly interdisciplinary: drawing from physics, biology, mathematics and engineering. The specific subjects of interest range from microbial and animal populations, amenable to laboratory scale experimentation, to physico-chemical systems such as mechanical oscillators and biomimetic soft active matter.