Research in the Needleman laboratory combines physics and cell biology to study biological self-organizing. We seek to obtain a quantitative understanding of biological systems; how they result from mechanics and energetics, and the self-organization of their constituents; how they are perturbed in disease and change over evolution.
Self-organizing biological systems are examples of active matter, since they are driven out of equilibrium by energy transduction at the molecular level. Our long term goals are to uncover general principles which govern these non-equilibrium systems and to develop predictive theories of biological organization and behaviors. Our approach is to study complex biological systems using a close interplay between quantitative experiments and theory, developing new methods to produce the data we need.