Karen ventured crosstown to Mount Sinai to give a seminar in the Department of Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine. A big thank you to Sergei Sokol and Rob Krauss for the invite and for hosting a fantastic visit!

Karen gave the Theory of Living Matter virtual seminar this week. A special thank you to Lakshmi Balasubramaniam (Cambridge) for the invite and hosting!

Karen co-organized the Symposium on the Mechanics of Biological Systems & Materials at the SEM Annual Conference. A big thank you to our fantastic keynote speakers Corinne Henak (UW Madison) and Taher Saif (UIUC). What a great time celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Biological Systems & Materials Technical Division in Milwaukee!

Karen headed upstate to visit Cornell to give the Physics Colloquium and Krumhansl Lecture. A very big thank you to Itai Cohen for hosting a great visit!

Karen headed across town to visit Rockefeller University to give the seminar at the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology. Thank you to Eric Siggia for hosting a great visit!

Karen visited NC State to give a keynote at the annual retreat for the Quantitative and Computational Developmental Biology Cluster (QCDB). A huge thank you to Eric Brooks for the invite and for hosting the most amazing visit! It was so great catching up with old friends and learning more about all the great science happening at QCDB!

Karen had so much fun giving the Biological Physics & Physical Biology (BPPB) virtual seminar this week. Thank you to Sonya Bahar for the invite and helping coordinate this fantastic seminar series!

Karen had a great time attending and giving a talk at the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) Annual Conference in Vancouver, WA!

Karen had so much fun visiting NYU to give the Physics Colloquium and seeing so many good friends. A big thank you to Alexandra Zidovska for the invite!

Kasza Lab went to APS March Meeting in Minneapolis. Sassan and Christian gave fantastic talks in their sessions! A big thank you to Max Bi and Ming Guo for inviting Karen to give a talked in their invited session!

Andrew gave a great talk on using our new endogenous OptoRhoGEFs to study the mechanics of tissue furrowing in the VGZT seminar series!

Kasza Lab went to ASCB Cell Bio 2023 in Boston. Andrew and Erika gave fantastic talks in their sessions! Sassan, Christian, and Tammy presented posters on their projects!

Karen had a fantastic time visiting Vanderbilt to give the Physics Colloquium! Many thanks to Shane Hutson for the invite and for hosting a great visit!

Kasza Lab Fall 2023!

Karen gave her final fellowship year talk at the Packard Fellows meeting in Colorado Springs! Such an honor to get to tell this amazing group of scientists and engineers about the recent research in our group. We can’t thank the The David & Lucile Packard Foundation enough for their tremendous support!

Karen had a blast at the Soft Condensed Matter Physics GRC on The Soft and Sustainable Building Blocks of Living and Active Systems. A huge thank you to Dan Blair and Daan Frenkel for the invite!

Check our new paper in the inaugural issue of PRX Life on using optogenetics to dissect the roles of actomyosin in tissue fluidity during embryonic development! Read the paper here.

You can read more about this work, including a great interview with Marisol Herrera-Perez, in this article in Physics Magazine.

Karen had so much fun attending and giving a talk at the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) Annual Conference! Guess who is the new chair of the Technical Division on Biological Systems & Materials?

A very big welcome to the newest lab members Mia and Bolu as part of the Columbia Engineering Summer@SEAS program!