I am a physics Ph.D. candidate working on theoretical biophysics in Pankaj Mehta’s group in the Boston University Physics Department. I study statistical and biological physics and how organization arises from complex systems.

I’m interested in the emergence of order in embryonic development. From error correction in DNA replication to robustness in cellular differentiation, the self-organization of development is fascinating. I’m interested in how gene regulatory networks process chemical and mechanical information to determine cell identity and make lineage “decisions.” I am currently developing a model of attractor networks that captures the complex, multifaceted process of cell fate determination.

I developed scTOP, an algorithm that projects gene expression data onto the subspace of cell type so that you can visualize transitions along the coordinates of cell fate. It’s a Hopfield-inspired way of tracking cell identity using single-cell RNA-sequencing data. scTOP available as a Python package (see Github repo). Feel free to reach out if you’d like help applying it to your analysis!