Aykut Argun starts his postdoc at the Physics Department of the University of Gothenburg on 21st September 2021.
Aykut has a PhD degree in Physics from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
During his postdoc, Aykut will continue his work on analysing stochastic trajectories with machine learning as well as experimental active matter systems.
Emil Jansson joined the Soft Matter Lab on 1st September 2021.
Emil is a master student in Complex Adaptive Systems at Chalmers University of Technology.
During his time at the Soft Matter Lab, he will focus on optimization of neural networks using genetic algorithms.
Giovanni Volpe
Invited Talk
(online at) ICTP, Trieste, Italy
8 September 2021, 11:30 CEST
Machine-learning methods are starting to shape active-matter research. Which new trends will this start? Which new groundbreaking insight and applications can we expect? More fundamentally, what can this contribute to our understanding of active matter? Can this help us to identify unifying principles and systematise active matter? This presentation addresses some of these questions with some concrete examples, exploring how machine learning is steering active matter towards new directions, offering unprecedented opportunities and posing practical and fundamental challenges. I will illustrate some most successful recent applications of machine learning to active matter with a slight bias towards work done in my research group: enhancing data acquisition and analysis; providing new data-driven models; improving navigation and search strategies; offering insight into the emergent dynamics of active matter in crowded and complex environments. I will discuss the opportunities and challenges that are emerging: implementing feedback control; uncovering underlying principles to systematise active matter; understanding the behaviour, organisation and evolution of biological active matter; realising active matter with embodied intelligence. Finally, I will highlight how active matter and machine learning can work together for mutual benefit.
Links:
Conference: Statistical Physics of Complex Systems | (smr 3624)
Program of Day 1 (8 September)
Saga Helgadottir starts her postdoc at the Physics Department of the University of Gothenburg on 1st September 2021.
Saga has a PhD degree in Physics from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
During her postdoc, Saga will continue her work on developing tools using deep learning to solve problems in image analysis and medical diagnosis.
Barbora Spackova joins the Soft Matter Lab at the Physics Department of the University of Gothenburg on 1st September 2021.
Barbora has a PhD in physical engineering from the Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic). Formerly, she has been a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology in the group of Prof. Christoph Langhammer. Her research is focused on single-molecule detection in nanofluidic systems.
While part of the Soft Matter Lab, she will continue her research on characterising cell media containing exosomes using Nanofluidic Scattering Microscopy (NSM).
Karla C. Hernández Ramos, Edna Rodríguez-Sánchez, Juan Antonio Arias del Angel, Alejandro V. Arzola, Mariana Benítez, Ana E. Escalante, Alessio Franci, Giovanni Volpe, Natsuko Rivera-Yoshida
Sci. Adv. 7(35), eabh2278 (2021)
bioRxiv: 10.1101/2021.01.27.428527
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abh2278
The social soil-dwelling bacteria Myxococcus xanthus can form multicellular structures, known as fruiting bodies. Experiments in homogeneous environments have shown that this process is affected by the physico-chemical properties of the substrate, but they have largely neglected the role of complex topographies. We experimentally demonstrate that the topography alters single-cell motility and multicellular organization in M. xanthus. In topographies realized by randomly placing silica particles over agar plates, we observe that the cells’ interaction with particles drastically modifies the dynamics of cellular aggregation, leading to changes in the number, size and shape of the fruiting bodies, and even to arresting their formation in certain conditions. We further explore this type of cell-particle interaction in a minimal computational model. These results provide fundamental insights into how the environment topography influences the emergence of complex multicellular structures from single cells, which is a fundamental problem of biological, ecological and medical relevance.
Eloy Garcia-Cabello, Lissett Gonzalez-Burgos, Joana B. Pereira, Juan Andres Hernández-Cabrera, Eric Westman, Giovanni Volpe, José Barroso, & Daniel Ferreira
Front. Aging Neurosci. 13, 530 (2021)
doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2021.694254
Objectives: Cognitive aging has been extensively investigated using both univariate and multivariate analyses. Sophisticated multivariate approaches such as graph theory could potentially capture unknown complex associations between multiple cognitive variables. The aim of this study was to assess whether cognition is organized into a structure that could be called the “cognitive connectome,” and whether such connectome differs between age groups.
Methods: A total of 334 cognitively unimpaired individuals were stratified into early-middle-age (37–50 years, n = 110), late-middle-age (51–64 years, n = 106), and elderly (65–78 years, n = 118) groups. We built cognitive networks from 47 cognitive variables for each age group using graph theory and compared the groups using different global and nodal graph measures.
Results: We identified a cognitive connectome characterized by five modules: verbal memory, visual memory—visuospatial abilities, procedural memory, executive—premotor functions, and processing speed. The elderly group showed reduced transitivity and average strength as well as increased global efficiency compared with the early-middle-age group. The late-middle-age group showed reduced global and local efficiency and modularity compared with the early-middle-age group. Nodal analyses showed the important role of executive functions and processing speed in explaining the differences between age groups.
Conclusions: We identified a cognitive connectome that is rather stable during aging in cognitively healthy individuals, with the observed differences highlighting the important role of executive functions and processing speed. We translated the connectome concept from the neuroimaging field to cognitive data, demonstrating its potential to advance our understanding of the complexity of cognitive aging.
Mite Mijalkov, Giovanni Volpe, Joana B Pereira
Cerebral Cortex, bhab237 (2021)
doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhab237
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by topological abnormalities in large-scale functional brain networks, which are commonly analyzed using undirected correlations in the activation signals between brain regions. This approach assumes simultaneous activation of brain regions, despite previous evidence showing that brain activation entails causality, with signals being typically generated in one region and then propagated to other ones. To address this limitation, here, we developed a new method to assess whole-brain directed functional connectivity in participants with PD and healthy controls using antisymmetric delayed correlations, which capture better this underlying causality. Our results show that whole-brain directed connectivity, computed on functional magnetic resonance imaging data, identifies widespread differences in the functional networks of PD participants compared with controls, in contrast to undirected methods. These differences are characterized by increased global efficiency, clustering, and transitivity combined with lower modularity. Moreover, directed connectivity patterns in the precuneus, thalamus, and cerebellum were associated with motor, executive, and memory deficits in PD participants. Altogether, these findings suggest that directional brain connectivity is more sensitive to functional network differences occurring in PD compared with standard methods, opening new opportunities for brain connectivity analysis and development of new markers to track PD progression.
The article Extracting quantitative biological information from brightfield cell images using deep learning
has been featured in: “Staining Cells Virtually Offers Alterative Approach to Chemical Dyes”, AIP SciLight (July 23, 2021).
Scilight showcases the most interesting research across the physical sciences published in AIP Publishing Journals.
Scilight is published weekly (52 issues per year) by AIP Publishing.
Daniel Andrén, Denis G. Baranov, Steven Jones, Giovanni Volpe, Ruggero Verre, Mikael Käll
Nat. Nanotechnol. (2021)
doi: 10.1038/s41565-021-00941-0
arXiv: 2012.10205
Nanostructured dielectric metasurfaces offer unprecedented opportunities to manipulate light by imprinting an arbitrary phase gradient on an impinging wavefront. This has resulted in the realization of a range of flat analogues to classical optical components, such as lenses, waveplates and axicons. However, the change in linear and angular optical momentum associated with phase manipulation also results in previously unexploited forces and torques that act on the metasurface itself. Here we show that these optomechanical effects can be utilized to construct optical metavehicles – microscopic particles that can travel long distances under low-intensity plane-wave illumination while being steered by the polarization of the incident light. We demonstrate movement in complex patterns, self-correcting motion and an application as transport vehicles for microscopic cargoes, which include unicellular organisms. The abundance of possible optical metasurfaces attests to the prospect of developing a wide variety of metavehicles with specialized functional behaviours.
