Hi! My name is Yufei.
Currently, I am a research assistant at Prof. Mark Peifer’s lab at UNC Chapel Hill, studying cadherin-based cell-cell adhesion complexes in Drosophila morphogenesis. I previously graduated from Minerva University, where I studied applied math and computational modeling and some statistical mechanics. During college, I focused on learning holistic tools for biophysics from projects in flocking model, graph deep learning, elastic mechanical material, polymer nanomaterial.
I am most interested in how energy flows in subcellular- and multicellular-organization are regulated in functional ways to adapt and grow. For example, how biomolecular condensates like the adherens junction interacts with complex cellular structures like the cytoskeletal filaments and the membrane to control force propagation during tissue morphogenesis. I am curious how these mechanisms generalize across different multicellular organization (such as eukaryote organ and tissue, and microbial biofilm or streamers). I plan to approach these questions through a combination of math and physical modeling, biological and biophysical experiments in graduate school.
Outside of academia, I have also been learning to work with farming and construction projects to gain hands-on experience with how biological materials behave in specific environments. In the long term, I want to collaborate with citizen science and stewardship groups like Malama Aina in Oahu to explore how we might apply biophysics knowledge to stream floor sediment dredging, and how might we implement bacteria biomaterial in watershed filtration.