activity
20242026
collaborators

8 papers

cond-mat.soft2026

Tissue shape from cell-scale active tensions

Nikolas H. Claussen, Fridtjof Brauns, Boris I. Shraiman

Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are…

cond-mat.soft2026

Feedback-controlled epithelial mechanics: emergent soft elasticity and active yielding

Pengyu Yu, Fridtjof Brauns, M. Cristina Marchetti

Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and…

cond-mat.soft2026

Emergent Elasticity and Quasiconformal Flow in Active Solids

Nikolas H. Claussen, Fridtjof Brauns, Boris I. Shraiman

A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governe…

cond-mat.soft2026

Proliferating Nematic That Collectively Senses an Anisotropic Substrate

Toshi Parmar, Fridtjof Brauns, Yimin Luo +1

Motivated by recent experiments on growing fibroblasts, we examine the development of nematic order in a colony of elongated cells proliferating on a nematic elastomer substrate. A…

cond-mat.soft2025

Active assembly and non-reciprocal dynamics of elastic membranes

John Berezney, Sattvic Ray, Itamar Kolvin +6

Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To…

cond-mat.soft2025

Active Solids: Topological Defect Self-Propulsion Without Flow

Fridtjof Brauns, Myles O'Leary, Arthur Hernandez +2

The self-propulsion of +1/2 topological defects is a hallmark of active nematic fluids, where the defects are advected by the flow field they themselves generate. In this paper we…