News

We are happy to welcome Steven Siegl back to the group as a Research Assistant. Steven, who previously completed his Master's in the group, will continue working on T cell receptor signaling. Welcome back, Steven!

Work by Steven Siegl, Sebastian Fürthauer, and Gerhard Schütz — "Clustering of the T-cell receptor complex may facilitate T-cell activation by stretching of CD3ζ cytoplasmic tails" — has been accepted for publication in the European Biophysics Journal. The study proposes that receptor clustering can mechanically stretch the CD3ζ cytoplasmic tails, offering a physical mechanism for T-cell activation. Congratulations to all authors!

Cédrik Barutel and Sebastian Fürthauer's work "Disentangling Entropic, Active, and Frictional Forces in Cytoskeletal Crosslinking" has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Research. The paper introduces a unified nonequilibrium-thermodynamics framework that decomposes crosslinker forces into entropic, active, and frictional contributions. Congratulations, Cédrik!

Sebastian Fürthauer is co-organizing the ICTS discussion meeting "Multiscale Flows and Self-Organisation in Living Matter", to be held March 1–6, 2027 at ICTS-TIFR in Bengaluru, India, together with Brato Chakrabarti (ICTS-TIFR) and Jasmin Imran Alsous (Flatiron Institute). The meeting brings together experimentalists and theorists to explore how hydrodynamics, elasticity, and active nonequilibrium mechanics shape biological structure and function across scales.

We are delighted to welcome Michael Stach, who joined the group on June 1st as a Research Assistant. Michael will be contributing to the centrosome project. Welcome to the team, Michael!

Emeline Laborie has been awarded the prestigious e-steem postdoctoral fellowship of the University of Vienna. She will continue her work in the Dammermann lab at the Max Perutz Labs. Congratulations, Emeline!

Sebastian Fürthauer is co-organizing mini-colloquium M37 "Emergent Behavior in Soft and Living Matter" at the Austrian Physical Society / CMD Joint Meeting in Graz. The session brings together experimental, theoretical, and computational researchers working on self-organization and pattern formation in non-equilibrium biological and synthetic soft matter systems. Abstract submission deadline: April 15, 2026.

New work by Cédrik Barutel and Sebastian Fürthauer presents a unified theoretical framework using nonequilibrium thermodynamics to decompose crosslinker forces into entropic, active, and frictional contributions — now on arXiv.

Collaborative work with Alexander Dammermann's group (Max Perutz Labs) shows centrosomes undergo a cell-cycle-dependent mechanical softening that facilitates spindle formation.

New work from the group on conserved phase-separating nucleators in self-straining cytoskeletal networks — now on arXiv.

Collaborative paper with Amy Maddox's group on three mechanistically distinct actomyosin contractile rings coexisting in a shared cytoplasm is now published.