Autonomous Matter Symposium 2026

Benoit Ladoux, Max Planck Center for Physics and Medicine

Title: Role of mechanical stresses in the regulation of epithelial tissue homeostasis.

Benoît Ladoux is a physicist whose research lies at the interface of cell mechanics, mechanobiology, and tissue physics. He received his PhD from the Institut Curie working on single-molecule biophysics and polymer dynamics. After a short post-doc on cell mechanics, he established an interdisciplinary research program on cell mechanics and adhesion as an Assistant Professor at the Matière et Systèmes Complexes Laboratory in Paris in 2001.

In 2008, he participated to the creation of the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) in Singapore with M. P. Sheetz. He was appointed Full Professor in the Department of Physics at Paris Diderot University in 2010. Between 2010 and 2013, he spent two years at MBI before returning to Paris to join the Institut Jacques Monod as a senior group leader, in close collaboration with cell biologist R. M. Mège. In 2015, he joined the CNRS as Research Director, while remaining a Principal Investigator at the Institut Jacques Monod. From 2013 to 2018, he divided his time between Paris and Singapore. In 2024, he was appointed Professor at FAU Erlangen–Nürnberg (Germany) within the Max Planck Center for Physics and Medicine.

His research seeks to uncover how cell–adhesion mechanisms are coupled to mechanotransduction, and how mechanosensing governs single-cell behavior, collective migration, and tissue homeostasis. More recently, his group has explored the role of active nematics in tissue organization, segregation, and cell extrusion.

Benoît Ladoux is a former member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2011–2015), recipient of the Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Award (2014), and was elected an EMBO Member in 2022. His internationally recognized work has been supported by three ERC grants, including an ERC Advanced Grant (2021) dedicated to cell extrusion.

He has published over 100 peer-reviewed research articles and 17 reviews, delivered more than 60 invited international lectures, and supervised or co-supervised approximately 40 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. He has coordinated major international and national research programs (ERC, HFSP, ANR, Ligue contre le Cancer, USPC–NUS), led an interdisciplinary Master’s program in Physics and Biology for over a decade (until 2022), served as co-director of the LABEX Who Am I? until 2024, and is an active member of multiple scientific advisory and funding evaluation committees.

Danny Sahtoe, Hubrecht Institute

Title: Conformational control of disordered regions through protein design

Danny Sahtoe joined the Hubrecht Institute as a group leader in 2023, after doing a PhD in structural biology in the lab of Titia Sixma at the NKI, and a postdoc in computational protein design in the lab of David Baker at the University of Washington. His group designs novel protein systems for biomedical and biotechnological use, and to elucidate the mechanistic basis of life in health and disease.

Elisabetta Chicca, Groningen University

Title: A neuromorphic processor with on-chip learning for beyond-CMOS device integration

Elisabetta Chicca obtained a “Laurea” degree (M.Sc.) in Physics from the University of Rome 1 “La Sapienza”, Italy in 1999 with a thesis on CMOS spike-based learning. In 2006 she received a Ph.D. in Natural Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ, Physics department) and in Neuroscience from the Neuroscience Center Zurich. E. Chicca has carried out her research as a Postdoctoral fellow (2006-2010) and as a Group Leader (2010-2011) at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (University of Zurich and ETH Zurich) working on development of neuromorphic signal processing and sensory systems. Between 2011 and 2020 she lead the Neuromorphic Behaving Systems research group at Bielefeld University (Faculty of Technology and Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence, CITEC). In 2020 she established the Bio-Inspired Circuits and Systems group at the University of Groningen. Her current interests are in the development of CMOS models of cortical circuits for brain-inspired computation, learning in spiking CMOS neural networks and memristive systems, bio-inspired sensing (vision, touch, olfaction, audition, active electrolocation) and motor control. She combines these research approaches with the aim of understanding neural computation by constructing behaving agents which can robustly operate in real-world environments.

Jay T. Groves, UC Berkeley

Title: Active condensation in signal transduction

Prof. Groves is interested in the physical and mechanistic aspects of signal transduction and biomolecular information processing at the cell membrane.  In recent years, his attention has been focused on competitive enzymatic reaction cycles, such as kinase-phosphatase controlling phosphorylation reactions and GEF-GAP competition controlling Ras activation.  These reaction cycles continuously consume energy and represent interesting, far-from-equilibrium steady state behaviors, including pattern formation and oscillations.  Prof. Groves did his undergraduate degree in Physics at Tufts University and received a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Stanford University. He has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley since 2001.  From 2008 to 2025 he was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and recently served as the Founding Director of IDMxS in Singapore from 2021 until 2023.

Pierre Thomas Brun, KU Leuven

PT Brun earned his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from École Polytechnique (2008), a master’s degree in Advanced Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge (2009), and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Sorbonne University (2012), where he studied the dynamics and instabilities of viscous and elastic threads. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at EPFL, specializing in interfacial fluid mechanics and instabilities. In 2014, he joined MIT as an instructor in Applied Mathematics, later moving to Princeton as a faculty member in Chemical and Biological Engineering, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2024. In 2025, he returned to Europe to join the Department of Chemical Engineering at KU Leuven, Belgium. His curiosity-driven research focuses on quantitative modeling of nonlinear fluid and elastic processes in soft materials and on pattern-forming instabilities, combining theory with experiments on thin films, viscous threads, microfluidics, elastic shells, swelling, and elastocapillarity.

Sijbren Otto, Groningen University

Title: Steps in the Synthesis of Life

Sijbren received his PhD in 1998 from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Following postdocs with Steve Regen (Lehigh University, USA) and Jeremy Sanders (University of Cambridge) he started his independent research career in Cambridge in 2001. He moved to the University of Groningen in 2009, where he is currently Professor of Systems Chemistry. He was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 2020 and was awarded ERC starting, advanced and synergy grants. He chaired two COST actions on Systems Chemistry and is currently coordinator of a doctoral training network on Darwinian Chemistry.

Marco Tamborini, Università Pegaso

Title: Autonomy is not Controlled, it is Shaped! A Philosophy of Science Perspective

Marco Tamborini is Associate Professor at Università Pegaso. His research focuses on the history and philosophy of biology, bio‑inspired engineering, biorobotics, and the philosophy of technology and technoscience from the nineteenth century to the present. He has held positions at the Technical University of Darmstadt, the University of Freiburg, and BTU Cottbus, as well as visiting appointments at Cambridge and EPFL.

Personal site of Marco Tamborini