Thrilling news! On Friday Steve has successfully defended his PhD thesis! Dr. Williams, as he’s now known, endured 3h of grilling by Giorgio Volpe (UCL) and Gareth Alexander (U Warwick)… and managed to emerge reasonably unscathed 😉 Steve has gracefully agreed to keep working with us as a postdoc for the next few months. Thanks Steve!

We’re very happy to announce that Iago has been awarded the Faculty Thesis Prize from Warwick Medical School, for his thesis “Biophysical mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance in swarming B. subtilis“. The thesis was co-supervised with our good friend Munehiro Asally. Well done Iago! You can read more about Iago’s work in his eLife publication and (hopefully soon) in a second follow-up article.

Iago is currently a postdoc in the Oxford Colloids Group (U. Oxford, UK).

We are very excited to welcome Shilpa Khatri, Assistant Professor at UC Merced (USA), who’s joined us at IMEDEA about 10 days ago for a 2-months visit. This is funded from a Visiting Fellowship from the University of the Balearic Islands. Between short trips to the continent and co-organising with us and others the 2022 MOB meeting, Shilpa will work with Steve Williams on a numerical project about phototaxis.

Over the last three weeks we were lucky enough to host Eleonora Secchi (ETH Zürich). Her visit was supported by a Visiting Fellowship from UIB (calls every 6 months: drop an email if interested!). We had lots of fun working on biofilm streamers by marine bacteria and in general exchanging ideas and learning from each other. Have a good fly back Eleonora and talk soon!

I am absolutely delighted to share the news that, together with Irene Stefanini (U. Torino), Daniel Segrè (Boston Uni) and Elizabeth New (U. Sydney), we have been awarded a grant from the Human Frontiers Science Program to work on the biophysics of yeast mating. This is a very intriguing subject involving mechanical stresses, metabolism, mixing flows and…. (surprisingly) the gut of wasps! In our group, this grant will finance a postdoctoral position and a lab technician with a starting date of 1st of Nov. (Ads coming out soon)

We’re delighted to share the news that Eleonora Secchi (ETH Zürich) has won a Visiting Fellowship from UIB to come and visit us at IMEDEA for the month of September 2021 (COVID permitting!). Eleonora is the head of the bioMatter Microfluidics Lab at ETH. She is a truly excellent scientist and we’re very excited to have the opportunity to host her here!

We are currently looking for a PhD student, funded by the Marie-Curie European Training Network PHYMOT. Come with us to study the inner biomechanics of the eukaryotic flagellum, one of the most complex known (biological) micro-machine! The PhD position is an excellent opportunity to do your research within a fantastic Europe-wide network of researchers, and an exciting plan of training activities and secondments.

To know more, feel free to email Marco. The current deadline is January 2020, with a starting date between February and December 2020. The position will be re-advertised if needed.

Congratulations to Iago for landing a postdoc with the wondrous Dirk Aarts, in the Colloid Group at Oxford! Very well deserved! …although he will be sorely missed once he graduates 🙂

A PDRA position is open in the group to work on a Leverhulme Trust-funded project on the link between light, motility and photosynthesis in microalgae. Apply here if interested, and/or contact Marco to know more!