Assistant Professor
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Sebastian Streichan is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California Santa Barbara researching on soft and living matter. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Universität des Saarlandes and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany. In his NIH K99 pathway to independence postdoc at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics he studied the physical rules of how genes instruct tissue flows that rearrange cells in convergent extension. His lab is extending these questions to decipher how living systems ‘tame’ physics to acquire complex forms. To this end, they develop methods that enable a quantitative approach that tightly integrates theory with experiment. These include (1) rapid live visualization of whole embryos at high resolution, (2) quantitative data analysis strategies such as tissue cartography for panoramic views of curved organ layers, and (3) physical models to bridge the gap between molecular and whole embryo level.