Bryn Mawr Alumnae/i Relations
&
Development
Golden Sages Spring Program
Thursday, March 20, 2025
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Program
Transport Properties of Corals and Other Ways Physics Can Help Us Understand Biology
with
Asja Radja, PhD, Assistant Professor of Physics
Program Description:
Biological patterns are ubiquitous in the world around us, from the venation patterns on leaves to the swirls of hurricanes; however, how patterns form or what they optimize is still not well understood in many systems. The Radja Lab aims to use physics as a tool to understand how biological patterns form and what they optimize in several biological systems such as corals and plants. Today, I will highlight recent work we’ve completed to identify how soft corals pattern themselves to optimize unique transport properties. Our work aims to also identify why some corals are thriving in warming oceans where others suffer.
Our Speaker:
Asja Radja completed a double major for her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2013 in physics and biochemistry. She then attended the University of Pennsylvania where she earned her doctorate in Physics in 2018. In 2019, she received a Schmidt Science Fellowship to work in the Mahadevan Lab in the Applied Math Department at Harvard University, and from 2020-2022 she received another fellowship to work as a Quantitative Biology Fellow at Harvard University. She joined the Bryn Mawr faculty in 2023 in the Physics Department, and her research currently explores the physics of biological pattern formation.