Physics and mathematics of active and living matter
I am a theoretical physicist broadly working in the area of statistical physics, stochastic systems, soft and active matter, and theoretical biophysics. Currently, I am a (4-year) Flora Philip Fellow based at The School of Mathematics, Applied and Computational Mathematics, at the University of Edinburgh.
My previous position was as an Isaac Newton Institute (INI) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Current questions/topics underpinning my research:
How to best steer continuous and discrete-state active matter to perform useful functions efficiently?
Mathematical and computational exploration of the stochastic geometry of active matter.
Exploring efficient and robust optimization of computer simulations of active matter.
How to adapt ideas and techniques from equilibrium thermodynamics to better understand the physics of active and living matter?
Biophysical modelling of assemblies of disordered proteins and condensates, that may also be out-of-equilibrium.
Current institutional affiliations:
News
Was honoured to give both invited and contributed talks at the APS Global Physics Summit 2026 in Denver, USA. Shared our new insights into the multi-parameter control of active systems and, separately, how activity affects the insertion space in low-dimensional hard spheres.
Check out our new work: Optimal multi-parameter control of trapped active matter arXiv (2026) link.
Check out our new work (first work, from the first member of the group, Letian Chen!): Reentrance in a Hamiltonian flocking model arXiv (2026) link.
Chair for the INI Listening and Responding to Public Interest: A Mathsci-comm Network Event.
Gave a recent talk at the Statistical Physics of Living Systems conferenceat CECAM-HQ EPFL Laussane (CH).
Check out our new preprint (in collaboration with Karel Proesmans): Insertion space in repulsive active matter.arXiv (2025) [link]”.
Many thanks to past and present funders:
