Madhav Mani

This is an exciting time to be studying organismal development. In spite of the progress in molecular biology built up over the last 3 decades, we are still searching for the mechanisms that couple the chemical and physical forms of organism. A misshaped hand, even with the right proportions of different cell types, wouldn't be of much use in gripping a cup of coffee. What are the collective cellular and tissue level mechanisms that generate the complex multicellular patterns of cellular differentiation and morphology in organisms? Recent advance in live fluorescent imaging provide us with a dynamic and spatially resolved view of organismal development, and what is needed now is the development of mathematical tools and models that can help ushering in a new, and physical, understanding of organismal biology.

In close collaboration with experimental labs around the world, my group develops quantitative image-analysis tools and mathematical models that guide the construction of inverse modeling schemes to make new and better measurements of live imaging data. When required, forward mathematical models are constructed to make sense of emergent phenomena, and more importantly, to generate predictions and hypotheses that guide future experimentation.