POSTDOCTORAL POSITION AVAILABLE!! (click here for information)

Biological interfaces across scales, including biomembranes, the cell cortex, or epithelial sheets, are unique multifunctional materials that control key structural and mechanical functions of cells and tissues, including their shape, mechanical properties, and locomotion. At scales below 10s of microns, elasticity, hydrodynamics and chemistry become intertwined and these systems are permanently driven out of equilibrium by biological activity. Furthermore, large geometric transformations and molecular crowding lead to strong nonlinearity. Our goal is to develop theoretical models and computational methods to quantitatively understand the mechanobiology of these interfaces, in tight interaction with experiments. We hope to answer fundamental scientific questions and to transpose the underlying engineering principles of these biological interfaces into to new artificial materials.

Selected Publications

Modelling fluid deformable surfaces with an emphasis on biological interfaces
Torres-Sanchez, A.; Millán, D.; Arroyo, M.
Journal of Fluid Mechanics, accepted, 2019. Submitted manuscript at http://arxiv.org/abs/1812.02837

Swimming Euglena respond to confinement with a behavioural change enabling effective crawling
Noselli, G.; Beran, A.; Arroyo, M; DeSimone, A.
Nature Physics, in press , 2019

Smart helical structures inspired by the pellicle of euglenids
Noselli, G.; Arroyo, M; DeSimone, A.
Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Vol. 123, pp. 234-246, 2019

Active superelasticity in three-dimensional epithelia of controlled shape
Latorre, E.; Kale, S.; Casares, L.; Gómez-González, M.; Uroz, M.; Valon, L.; Nair, R.V.; Garreta, E.; Montserrat, N.; del Campo, A.; Ladoux, B.; Arroyo, M.; Trepat, X.
Nature, Vol. 563, pp. 203-208, 2018

A variational model of fracture for tearing brittle thin sheets
Li, B.; Millán, D.; Torres-Sánchez, A.; Roman, B. and Arroyo, M.
Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Vol. 119, pp. 334-348, 2018

Onsager’s Variational Principle in Soft Matter: Introduction and Application to the Dynamics of Adsorption of Proteins onto Fluid Membranes
M. Arroyo, N. Walani, A. Torres-Sánchez and D. Kaurin
The role of mechanics in the study of lipid bilayers,  pp. 287-332, 2018

Charting molecular free-energy landscapes with an atlas of collective variables
Hashemian, B.; Millán, D and Arroyo, M.
The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 145, Article number: 174109, 2016

Hydraulic fracture and toughening of a brittle layer bonded to a hydrogel
Lucantonio, A.; Noselli, G.; Trepat, X.; DeSimone, A.; Arroyo, M.
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 115, Article number: 188105, 2015

Examining the mechanical equilibrium of microscopic stresses in molecular simulations
Torres-Sánchez, A.; Vanegas, J. M.; Arroyo, M.
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 114, Article number: 258102, 2015

Projects

Thesis

A theoretical and computational study of the mechanics of biomembranes at multiple scales
Alejandro Torres Sánchez
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
11 July 2017

The variational approach to brittle fracture in materials with anisotropic surface energy and in thin sheets
Bin Li
ETSE de Camins, Canals i Ports de Barcelona
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
8 March 2016

Engineering patterns of wrinkles and bubbles in supported graphene through modeling and simulation
Kuan Zhang
Facultat de Matemàtiques i Estadística
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
10 June, 2015

Machine learning in multiscale modeling and simulation of molecular systems
Behrooz Hashemian (see Thesis web)
Facultat de Matemàtiques i Estadística
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
8 May, 2015

Approximation of phase-field models with meshfree methods: exploring biomembrane mechanics
Christian Peco
ETSE de Camins, Canals i Ports de Barcelona
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
28 October, 2014

Shape dynamics and lipid hydrodynamics of bilayer membranes: modelling, simulation and experiments
Mohammad Rahimi
ETSE de Camins, Canals i Ports de Barcelona
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
9 April, 2013

Point-set manifold processing for computational mechanics: thin shells, reduced order modeling, cell motility and molecular conformations
Daniel Millán (see Thesis web)
Facultat de Matemàtiques i Estadística
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
12 November, 2012

Developments in maximum entropy approximants and application to phase field models
Adrián Rosolen
Facultat de Matemàtiques i Estadística
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
11 July 2011