Dr. Yoav G. Pollack

I'm a passionate researcher of statistical physics and a computational development enthusiast.

I hold a PhD in Physics.

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My research involves the theoretical study of active soft matter composed microscopically of living cells, and specifically focusing on the unique physics of matter composed of proliferating elements. In part, I am exploiting well-studied avenues of research in soft matter such as mechanics, statistical forces, and arrested dynamics (e.g. jamming), which in this unique framework produce novel phenomena that cannot exist in standard soft matter. Furthermore, the proliferating nature of cells (as well as cell elimination) enables me to also study research domains that have no parallels in inert soft matter, such as competition leading to a change of material composition and evolving mechanical properties. The research questions I am interested in are motivated by biological examples, particularly of dense cellular collectives such as tissues and bacterial colonies. I design and perform computationally intensive simulations to discover these novel phenomena and pinpoint their origin, and complement these with simple analytical models that can provide more refined intuition and predictions.