What sparked your interest in physics?

I can remember being drawn towards science since I was a kid, mostly through a basic curiosity about the (natural) world. I think what drew me into physics specifically is its emphasis on “principles”; that by operating on a basis of abstraction, we can come up with simple explanations for many different complicated and seemingly distinct types of systems. I really like how this approach creates a lot of possibilities for interdisciplinary research directions. It’s fitting that I find myself working in biological physics. There are so many diverse and fascinating behaviours exhibited by biological systems that we do not understand. The tools of physics offer an exciting opportunity to explore what principles might underly biological function across organisms and scales of complexity.

Can you tell us more about your academic journey?

I’ve been at U of T since 2015. As an undergrad I started off in the physics & philosophy program. Naturally, this program emphasized philosophy of science, whereas I was more interested in other areas of philosophy. I took this as a hint that I should reconsider my program choice. At the time I was curious about career paths in medical physics or medicine, so I decided to check out the biological physics program. I later decided to start taking extra math courses to get a math major as well. My first research experience was at Sunnybrook Research Institute in a medical imaging lab, where I worked as a research assistant for a couple of years. I really enjoyed this experience and learned a lot of signal processing and image analysis techniques. During this time, I also learned about synthetic biology through joining the UofT iGEM (internation genetically engineered machine competition) team. It occurred to me that there’s a lot physics can offer to thinking about biology as complex systems and approaching biology as an engineering science. After my undergraduate studies I decided to stick around to do my Ph.D. with Prof. Andreas Hilfinger’s biological physics theory group.

Can you give us a brief summary of your research?

Biological systems across various scales achieve a remarkable degree of robustness to external perturbations and uncertain conditions. For example, starting from a single-cell, embryos self-organize to create complex multicellular organisms in uncertain and time-varying environments (e.g. due to availability/composition of energy sources, temperature or pH changes, etc.). Regulatory systems underlying biological function such as this are fundamentally composed of stochastic (noisy) interactions between molecules within complex cellular environments. In my research I use tools from statistical physics to understand how cells can achieve such robust control through stochastic reaction networks.

A key result of my dissertation work has been to show that a previously proposed “unavoidable” trade-off between adaptation of cellular averages and stochastic variability is a singular limit. This insight led me to propose a revised implementation of biomolecular “integral control” with improved noise properties for synthetic biology applications. Currently I am working on an experimental collaboration to understand the regulatory structures underlying robustness in vertebrate development. Specifically, I am developing phenomenological models to predict the perturbation response of developmental signals in experiments with zebrafish embryos.

What extracurricular activities are you involved in?

Outside of research I like to make music. I’ve been developing new material with two band projects and just finished recording an EP with one of them. I also recently contributed to a really beautiful album from my friend’s project called 3C84 (named after the radio galaxy of the same name…) – the album is called “Myrtle in the Forest” and can be streamed on Spotify/Apple Music/Bandcamp.

What advice would you give to aspiring physicists?

Keep an open mind. This will help you find creative ways to solve research problems and may lead you to applying physics to solve interesting questions you may not have considered. It’ll also help in developing interests outside of physics and may lead to interesting paths after you graduate!