About his PhD project

Recent experiments on gastrulation show that cells can modify their environment by depositing cues that guide the movement of other cells. In these experiments, non-motile stem cells differentiate into motile mesoendoderm cells. Using beads coated with growth factors, experimenters can control the spatial regions where stem cells differentiate. They found that, depending on the spatial organization of the beads, mesoendoderm cells segregate from stem cells, leading to phase separation. We study this system using coarse-grained theories and agent-based simulations. The goal is to understand how a memory field influences the collective motion and spatial organization of self-propelled agents.