Amin Doostmohammadi to lead new 75M DKK center on the Physics of Living Tissue
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded a major 75 MDKK Challenge Program Grant for six year to NBIA Associate Professor Amin Doostmohammadi. The project includes international partners Nikta Fakhri (MIT), Erwin Frey (University of Munich), and Xavier Trepat (IBEC, Barcelona).
Active Matter is one of the most promising avenues in Biological Physics today. Amin Doostmahammadi's new center will tackle one of biology's most fundamental questions: How do individual cells coordinate their actions to create organized, functioning tissues without a central controller? By combining physics, biology, and information theory, the ALIVE team will investigate how forces, signals, and cellular decisions generate the "arrow of time" in living systems—a concept that could help predict, understand, and ultimately influence tissue development, regeneration, and disease.
Research will span four biological systems, from sea sponges and intestinal organoids to colorectal cancer models and human embryoids, using cutting-edge imaging, force measurements, molecular tools, and theoretical physics. Beyond the science, ALIVE will train the next generation of researchers through a major recruitment of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows across its partner institutions.