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academic

STUDENT PROFILES

Clifford Brangwynne

Area

Applied Physics

Focus

Clifford's research involves understanding the structure and mechanics of biological materials and their role in fundamental cell processes such as migration and force generation.

Education

Carnegie Mellon University, B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering; Physics minor

I fell in love with cells and have been poking, stretching, and staring at them since.

But in the end they are materials that obey the laws of physics like everything else, and so you've got to take an approach where you look at the physics, chemistry, and biology, and maybe at the end of the day you have some idea of how they work---or maybe not, but at least you'll have more magic to wonder about.

One minute I'm watching groups of tumor cells crawl around and invade the surrounding tissue, and the next minute I'm looking at how much a microtubule is bending inside a tiny compartment of one of those cells.

The biggest challenge and the biggest excitement comes from the thought that somehow these phenomena---the behavior of a nanometer-sized tube inside of a cell and the behavior of cells in a tissue---are connected.