Group Members

Dr. Azam Gholami

I am a group leader at the Department of Prof. Bodenschatz interested on the experimental and theoretical aspects of pattern formation in colonies of Dictysotelium discoideum (D.d.) cells. The slim mold D.d. is a valuable model organism to study pattern formation and development in biology. When deprived of nutrients, D.d. cells aggregate by a chemotactic response to the chemoattractant cAMP and then develop to form multicellular fruiting bodies. The cells initiate the process by the spontaneous release of cAMP pulses. The other cells respond to the attractant stimulation by moving towards its source and by relaying the signal. As a result, circular and spiral wave patterns form with time, which have a periodicity of few minutes. In the natural environment, this aggregation occurs in forest soil and may be subject to water flow. Our previous work on flow-driven waves in a colony of signaling D.d. cells has shown that the external flow can significantly change the wave generation processes. Our investigations are also focused on pattern formation of D.d. cells in the presence of external obstacles. In their natural habitat, populations of starving cells are exposed to spatial heterogeneities that will profoundly influence the processes of wave generation and propagation. Moreover, in the synthetic biology project, we are interested on cilia-driven motility and transport.

M.Sc. Raheel Ahmad

Raheel Ahmad received his research-based master degree in Chemical Engineering in 2016 from KAIST, Republic of Korea. During his master thesis, he developed a new platform for ultrasensitive detection of low-abundant proteins. He has been working as a research scientist at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST (2016-2017) and Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) (2017-2018), Spain, where he added a valuable skill to his expertise through clean room handling, development of lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices for biological applications, acoustofluidic, and molecular biology techniques. In Dec, 2018, he joined Pattern Formation in Biological Systems research group as a Ph.D student, where he focuses on isolation of biological cilia, surface patterning, droplet microfluidic, fluid transport, and system dynamics.

M. Sc. Torsten Eckstein

Torsten Eckstein studied physics at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen where he received his Master's in 2016. He joined the group for his Master's degree to study pattern formation in Dictyostelium Discoideum experimentally, which he now continues as a PhD student. He is investigating the influence of geometric constraints, flow and chemical perturbations on the system.

Alumni

Dr. Estefania Vidal Henriquez

Estefania Vidal received her Bachelor of Science in Physics from Universidad de Chile in 2012 and her master of Science in Physics from the same university in 2015. She joined the group in 2015 working on "Influence of Flow and Spatial Heterogeneities on Pattern Formation of Dictyostelium discoideum". She recently defended her PhD and is now a Postdoctoral fellow in the group of D. Zwicker (https://www.zwickergroup.org/people).